
Class 1 AA 32*. 

Book^4_^ 

\87l- 



WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



LIBRARY EDITION. 

VOL. XXIX. 

A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 

AND 

A HOLIDAY ROMANCE, &c. 




ALFRED IN THE NEATHERD'S COTTAGE. 



A CHILD'S 



History of England 



A HOLIDAY ROMANCE, 



OTHER PIECES. 



By CHARLES DICKENS. 



< 



E53Dii*2£! 




BOSTON : 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

(LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.) 
l87l. 



|?T| 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, 

By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 

In the Office of the* Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Boston : 
Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, A very, &" Co. 



CONTENTS. 



[INCLUDING CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF A CHILD'S HISTORY OF 
ENGLAND.] 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS. From 50 
y years before Christ to the year of our Lord 450 1 

II. ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS. 

From the year 450 to the year 871 11 

III. ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON ALFRED, 

and edward the elder. From the year 871 to the year 901, 16 

IV. ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY- 

kings. From the year 925 to the year 1016 . 22 

V. ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE. From the 

year 1016 to the year 1035 33 

VI. ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDI- 
canute, and edward the confessor. From the year 1035 
to the year 1066 35^ 

VII. ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND 

conquered by the normans. All in the same year, 1066 . 43 

VIII. ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE 

norman conqueror. From the year 1066 to the year 1087 . 48 

IX. ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED 

rufus. From the year 1087 to the year 1 100 .... 56 

X. ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIRST, CALLED 

fine-scholar. From the year i 100 to the year i i 35 . . 63 

XI. ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN. From 

the year 1 1 35 to the year 1154 73 

XII. ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SECOND. From the 

year 1 154 to the year 1 1 89. Parts First and Second . . . 77 

XIII. ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE FIRST, CALLED 

the lion-heart. From the year i i 89 to the year i 199 . . 96 

v 



vi CONTENTS, AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 

CHAP. PAGE 

XIV. ENGLAND UNDER JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND. 

From the year 1 199 to the year 1216 .105 

XV. ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE THIRD. # From the 

year 1216 to the year 1272 . • 117 

XVI. ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIRST, CALLED 

longshanks. From the year 1272 to the year 1307 . . . 129 

XVII. ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SECOND. From 

the year 1307 to the year 1327 146 

XVIII. ENGLAND' UNDER EDWARD THE THIRD. From the 

year 1327 to the year 1377 156 

XIX. ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE SECOND. From 

the year 1377 to the year 1399 169 

XX. ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FOURTH, CALLED 

bolingbroke. From the year 1399 to the year 1413 . . . 180 

XXI. ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIFTH. . From the 

year 1413 to the year 1422. Parts First and Second . . . 186 

XXII. ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTH. From the 
year 1422 to the year 1461. Parts First, Second {the Story of 
Joan of A re), and Third 196 

XXIII. ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FOURTH. From 

the year 1461 to the year 1483 ....;.. 215 

XXIV. ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE- FIFTH. For a few 

weeks in the year 1483 223 

XXV. ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE THIRD. From the 

year 14S3 to the year 1485 228 

XXVI. ENGLAND UNDER* HENRY THE SEVENTH. From 

the year 1485 to the year 1509 233 

XXVII. ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH, CALLED 

BLUFF KING HAL AND BURLY KING HARRY. From the year 

1509 to the year 1533 244 

XXVIII. ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE EIGHTH, CALLED 
bluff king hal and burly king harry. From the year 
1533 to the year 1547 . ........ 256 

XXIX. ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SIXTH. From the 

year 1547 to the year 1553 266 

XXX. ENGLAND UNDER MARY. From the year 1553 to the 

year 1558 274 

XXXI. ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH. From the year 1558 to 

the year 1603. Parts First, Second, and Third . . . 287 

XXXII. ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE FIRST. From the year 

1603 to the year 1625. Parts First and Second . . . . 3 1 * 



CONTENTS, AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. vii 

CHAP. PAGE 

XXXIII. ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST. From the 
year 1625 to the year 1649. Parts First, Second, Third, and 
Fourth 327 

XXXIV. ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL. From the 

year 1649 to the year 1660. Parts First and Second . . . 356 

XXXV. ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, CALLED 
the merry monarch. From the year 1660 to the year 1685. 
Parts First and Second ... 1 372 

XXXVI. ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND. From the 

year 16S5 to the year 1688 393 

XXXVII. CONCLUSION. From the year 1688 to the year 1837 . . 406 



' ' HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

IN FOUR PARTS. 
PART 

I. INTRODUCTORY ROMANCE. From the pen of William Tink- 
ling, Esquire .411 

II. ROMANCE. From the pen of Miss Alice Rainbird . . . .419 

III. ROMAI^E. From the pen of Lieut. -Col. Robin Redforth . . . 429 

IV. ROMANCE. From the pen of Miss Nettie Ashford . . . .438 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 

CHAPTER 1 449 

CHAPTER II 449 

CHAPTER III 45 o 

CHAPTER IV. . . 4S i 

CHAPTER V 4S5 

CHAPTER VI ' . . 458 

CHAPTER VII 466 

CHAPTER VIII. • • .• 470 

CHAPTER IX .472 



CONTENTS, AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

PAGE 

AN URGENT REMONSTRANCE TO THE GENTLEMEN OF 

ENGLAND 481 

THE YOUNG COUPLE 484 

THE FORMAL COUPLE ; 488 

THE LOVING COUPLE 491 

THE CONTRADICTORY COUPLE 496 

THE COUPLE WHO DOTE UPON THEIR CHILDREN . . .500 

THE COOL COUPLE . 505 

THE PLAUSIBLE COUPLE 5 o8 

THE NICE LITTLE COUPLE S n 

THE EGOTISTICAL COUPLE 5 i 5 

THE COUPLE WHO CODDLE THEMSELVES 519 

THE OLD COUPLE 523 

CONCLUSION . . 527 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST . . . S33 

ABOARD SHIP 544 

A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR . . . . - . . . . S54 

MR. BARLOW 561 

ON AN AMATEUR BEAT 5 6 7 

A FLY-LEAF PROM LIFE 575 

A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE -579 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
ALFRED IN THE NEATHERD'S COTTAGE . . . Frontispiece. 

PAGE 

ARTHUR AND HUBERT 108 

JOAN OF ARC TENDING THE SHEEP 198 

LADY JANE GREY WATCHING THE BODY OF HER HUS- 
BAND BEING CARRIED PAST HER WINDOW AFTER 
EXECUTION 278 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

TINKLING AND THE PIRATE-COLONEL 413 

THE PRINCESS ALICIA 424 

THE PIRATE-COLONEL AND HIS CAPTIVE 432 

THE OBSTINATE BOYS 444 



A Child's History of England. 



TABLE OF THE REIGNS. 

Beginning with King Alfred the Great. 



THE SAXONS. 

T GreS 6 ^ ° f AlfVed the i began in 8?1 * ended in 9 ° I * and laSted 3 ° yearS ' 

T El?e? §n0fEd . Wa . rd . th ?j beganin 9 ° x ' endedin 92S • and lasted 24 years. 

Tke Reign of Atrfelstan . began in 925 . ended in 941 . and lasted 16 years. 

T KiSf s ignSOftheSk ^ 0y *j be§anin 941 • endedini ° l6 • and lasted 75 years. 

THE DANES, AND THE RESTORED SAXONS. 
The Reign of Canute . . began in 1016 . ended in 1035 . and lasted 19 years. 
The Reign of Harold Hare- J beganinio35 _ ended in 1040 . and lasted 5 years. 

The Reign of Hardicanute began in 1040 . ended in 1042 . and lasted 2 years. 
The Reign of Edward the j b • ended in Io66 , and i aste d 24 years. 

Confessor ) & 

The Reign of Harold the Second, and the Norman Conquest, were also 
within the year 1066. 

THE NORMANS. 

The Reign of William the ) 
First, called the Con- > began in 1066 . ended in 1087 . and lasted 21 years, 
queror ) 

^ec^nFcafleTRufos* J began in 1087 . ended in 1 100 . and lasted 13 years. 
TSJ^ rf lS^^ fa ~.- - dedin "3S • and lasted 35 year, 
T1 gJ^ sofMatildaand began in 1 135 . ended in 1 154 ■ and lasted 19 years. 

THE PLANTAGENETS. 

^ecScP ° f Henl7 the i began in " 54 • ended in Il8Q ' and IaSt6d 3S yearS ' 
The Reign of Richard the ) 

First, called the Lion- } began in n 89 . ended in 1 199 . and lasted 10 years. 

Heart ) 

xiii 



xiv 



TABLE OF THE EEIGNS. 



THE PLANTAGENETS. — {Continued.) 

T L *kS° f J ° hn ' Calkd i began in "" ' ended in I2I& ' and laSted I7 yearS * 

T Thifd ign ° f Henry the i began in I216 * ended in I2?2 ' and laSted s6 years ' 

m FiSfaSSS^i begaainxa7a ' endedIni 3°7 • and lasted 35 year, 

^eSnd 11 ° f EdWa " d . th ! i began in I3 ° 7 ' ended in 1327 . and lasted 20 years. 

T Th5d §n0f . Ed . Wa . rd . th ?i besanini327 * ended in 1377 • and lasted S o years. 

T S e e5ncT 0f Ri ° ha . rd . th !j began in 1377 • ended in 1399 • and lasted 22 years. 

The Reign of Henry the) 

Fourth, called Boiling- | began in 1399 . ended in 1413 . and lasted 14 years, 

broke ) 

T1 Fifth eiSn .° f . He ^ y . th ?i besanini413 * ended in 1422 . and lasted 9 years. 

T1 s e ixth eign of Henry th ! i began in I422 * ended in 14<Sl • and Iasted 39 years * 

T Fourfh gn ? fEdW ^ d . th '| besanini46 ^ ' endedini 48 3 • and lasted 22 years. 

Tl^ReignofEdwardthej beganini483 . ended in ^3 . j andjaste d a few 

T Thh! S . n ? fRiCha ! :d . th ?i beganini483 ' ended in I4 8 S . and lasted 2 years. 

THE TUDORS. 

T1 Sev?nth n ° f . Hen 7 . th ^ j began in 1485 . ended in 1509 . and lasted 24 years. 

^Eighth 2 " .° f H ! nr . y . th !j began in 1509 '. ended in 1547 • and lasted 38 years. 

T1 Six R f g . n ? fEdWa " d . th ?i beganini S47 • ended in 1553 • and lasted 6 year, 

The Reign of Mary . . . began in 1553 . ended in 1558 . and lasted 5 years. 

The Reign of Elizabeth . began in 1558 . ended in 1603 . and lasted 45 years. 

THE STUARTS. 

Th F e ir S ReiSn . 0f . J f meS . th ?j beganini6 ° 3 • ended in 1625 . and lasted 22 years. 

T1 FirS ei ? n .° f Charl f S . th ! j began in 1625 . ended in 1649 . and lasted 24 years. 

THE COMMONWEALTH. 

The Council of State and) 

Government by Parlia- 1 began in 1649 . ended in 1653 . and lasted 4 years, 

ment ) 

T G^Sl! m * e ? f ? li . Ve !i b «8 aninx6 S3 ' ended in 1658 . and lasted 5 years. 



TABLE OF THE REIGNS. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. — (Continued. ) 

^S»^| *■««■*" • ended in ,659 .'{"tiff - ~ 
The Council of State, and ) , -, , . , t v,;^.„ tt 

Government by Parlia- j resumed in 1659 ended in 1660 . { ^^nths tlnrteen 

ment ) * 

THE STUARTS RESTORED. 

^econr. ^ 01 !^ 3 . 111 ?! 136 ^ 111111660 ' ended in r68 S \ and lasted 25 years. 
Th S e econd gn . 0f . J f meS . th ?j be g anini68 5 ■ ended in 1688 . and lasted 3 years. 

THE REVOLUTION. — 1688. 

COMPRISED IN THE CONCLUDING CHAPTER. 
/ 
The Reign of William the \ 
Third and Mary the \ began in 1689 . ended in 1695 . and lasted 6 years. 
Second ) 

The Reign of William the \ „ , , . ., a. 

Third . A ended in 1702 . and lasted 13 years. 

The Reign of Anne . . . began in 1702 . ended in 1 714 . and lasted 12 years. 

Th Firft ei§n ° f Ge ° r f . th ! | began in I?I4 ■ ended in 1?27 ' and lasted I3 years ' 

T S e econd gn . Of . G ! 0r f e . th ?i beganini727 ' ended in 1760 . and lasted 33 years. 

T ThkaT ° f ^f .^ i I began in I76 ° ' ended in 1820 . and lasted 60 years. 

T Fourth^ . 0fGe .° rge . th ^j began in 1820 . ended in 1830 . and lasted 10 years. 

T Fourtlf n f y iUia . m . th ^j began in 1830 . ended in 1837 . and lasted 7 years. 
The Reign of Victoria . . began in 1837. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER I. 

ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS. 

If you look at a map of the world, you will see, in the 
leftxhand upper corner of the Eastern Hemisphere, two 
islands lying in the sea. They are England and Scotland, 
and Ireland. England and Scotland form the greater part 
of these islands. Ireland is the next in size. The little 
neighboring islands, which are so small upon the map as to 
be mere dots, are chiefly little bits of Scotland, — broken 
off, I dare say, in** the course of a great length of time, by 
the power of the restless water. 

In the old da3^s,-a long, long while ago, before our Saviour 
was born on earth, and lay asleep in a manger, these islands 
were in the same place ; and the stormy sea roared round 
them, just as it roars now. But the sea was not alive then 
with great ships and brave sailors, sailing to and from all 
parts of the world. It was very lonely. The islands lay 
solitary in the great expanse of water. The foaming waves 
dashed against their cliffs, and the bleak winds blew over 
their forests. But the winds and waves brought no adven- 
turers to land upon the islands ; and the savage islanders 
knew nothing of the rest of the world, and the rest of the 
world knew nothing of them. 

It is supposed that the Phoenicians, who were an ancient 
people, famous for carrying on trade, came in ships to these 
islands, and found that they produced tin and lead ; b^n 
very useful things, as you know, and both product to. this 
very hour upon the sea-coast. The most Celebrated tin- 
mines in Cornwall are still close to the ^ea. One of them, 
which I have seen, is so close to it that it is hollowed out 

l 



2 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

underneath the ocean ; and the miners say, that m stormy 
weather, when they are at work down in that deep place, 
they can hear the noise of the waves thundering above their 
heads. So the Phoenicians, coasting about the islands, 
would come, without much difficulty, to where the tin and 
lead were. 

The Phoenicians traded with the islanders for these met- 
als, and gave the islanders some other useful things in ex- 
change. The islanders were at first poor savages, going 
almost naked, or only dressed in the rough skins of beasts, and 
staining their bodies, as other savages do, with colored earths 
and the juices of plants. But the Phoenicians, sailing over 
to the opposite coasts of France and Belgium, and saying 
to the people there, " We have been to those white cliffs 
across the water, which you can see in fine weather ; and, 
from that country, which is called Britain, we bring this 
tin and lead," tempted some of the French and Belgians to . 
come over also. These people settled themselves on the 
south coast of England, which is now called Kent; and, 
although they were a rough people too, they taught the sav- 
age Britons some useful arts, and improved that part of the 
islands. It is probable that other peop^reame over from 
Spain to Ireland, and settled there. 

Thus, by little and little, strangers became mixed with 
the islanders, and the savage Britons grew into a wild, bold 
people ; almost savage still, especially in the interior of the 
country, away from the sea, where the foreign settlers seldom 
went; but hardy, brave, and strong. 

The whole country was covered with forests and swamps. 

The greater part of it was very misty and cold. There 

were no roads, no bridges, no streets, no houses that you 

would think deserving of the name. A town was nothing 

but a collection of straw-covered huts, hidden in a thick 

wood, with a ditch all round, and a low wall made of mud 

or the trunks of trees placed one upon another. The peo- 

nlanted little or no corn, but lived upon the flesh of their 

">d cattle. They made no coins, but used metal- 

^ey. They were clever in basket-work, as sav- 

are ; and they could make a coarse kind of 

- very bad earthenware. But in building 

vere much more clrver. 

ats of basket-work, covered with the skins 

of fan eldom, if ever, ven J i .red far from the short". 



i, 



ENGLAND UNDER THE ROMANS. 3 

They made swords of copper mixed with tin ; but these swords 
were of an awkward shape, and so soft that a heavy blow 
would bend one. They made light shields ; short, pointed 
daggers; and spears, which they jerked back, after they 
had thrown them at an enemy, by a long strip of leather 
fastened to the stem. The butt-end was a rattle, to frighten 
an enemy's horse. The ancient Britons, being divided into 
as many as thirty or forty tribes, each commanded by its 
own little king, were constantly fighting with one another, 
as savage people usually do ; and they always fought with 
these weapons. 

They were very fond of horses. The standard of Kent 
was the picture of a white horse. They could break them 
in and manage them wonderfully well. Indeed, the horses 
(of which they had an abundance, though they were rather 
small) were so well taught in those days, that they can 
scarcely be said to have improved since ; though the men 
are so much wiser. They understood and obeyed every 
word of command ; and would stand still by themselves, in 
all the din and noise of battle, while their masters went to 
fight on foot. I^mBritons could not have succeeded in 
their most rema^pfe art without the aid of these sensible 
and trusty animals. The art I mean is the construction 
and management of war-chariots, or cars ; for which they 
have ever been celebrated in history. Each of the best sort 
of these chariots, not quite breast-high in front, and open 
at the back, contained one man to drive, and two or three 
others to fight, -»- all standing up. The horses who drew 
thei* were so well trained, that they would tear, at fall gal- 
* >p, over the most stony ways, and even through the woods ; 
ashing down their masters' enemies beneath their hoofs, 
and cutting them to pieces with the blades of swords, or 
scythes, which were fastened to the wheels, and stretched 
out beyond the car on each side, for that cruel purpose. In 
a moment, while at full speed, the horses would stop at the 
driver's command. The men within would leap out, deal 
blows about them with their swords, like hail, leap on the 
horses, on the pole, spring back into the chariots anyhow ; 
and, as soon as they were safe, the horses tore away again. 

The Britons had a strange and terrible religion, called 
the religion of the Druid**' It seems to have been brought 
over, in very early times indeed, from the opposite country 
of France, anciently cafte'd Gaul, and to have mixed up the 



4 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

worsnip of the Serpent, and of the Sun and Moon, with the 
worship of some of the heathen gods and goddesses. Most of 
its ceremonies were kept secret by the priests, — the Druids, 
— who pretended to be enchanters, and who carried magicians' 
wands, and wore, each of them, about his neck, what he told 
the ignorant people was a serpent's egg in a golden case. 
But it is certain that the Druidical ceremonies included the 
sacrifice of human victims, the torture of some suspected 
criminals, and, on particular occasions, even the burning 
alive, in immense wicker-cages, of a number of men and ani- 
mals together. The Druid priests had some kind of venera- 
tion for the oak, and for the mistletoe (the same plant that 
we hang up in houses at Christmas-time now) when its white 
berries grew upon the oak. They met together in dark 
woods, which they called sacred groves ; and there they in- 
structed in their mysterious arts young men who came to 
them as pupils, • and who sometimes staid with them as 
long as twenty years. 

These Druids built great temples and altars, open to the 
sky, fragments of some of which are yet remaining. Stone- 
henge, on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire's the most extra- 
ordinary of these. Three curious stol^fcpalled Kits Coty 
House, on Bluebell Hill, near Maidstorre, in Kent, form 
another. We know, from examination of the great blocks 
of which such buildings are made, that they could not have 
been raised without the aid of some ingenious machines 
which are common now, but wfc Lch the ancient Britons cer- 
tainly did not use in making the ; ^ own uncomfortable houses. 
I should not wonder if the Druids, and their pupils ^who 
staid with them twenty years, knowing more than the resfcw 
of the Britons, kept the people out of sight while they made^j 
these buildings, and then pretended that they built them by 
magic. Perhaps they had a hand in the fortresses too ; at 
all events, as they were very powerful, and very much be- 
lieved in, and as they made and executed the laws, and paid 
iio taxes, I don't wonder that they liked their trade. And, 
as they persuaded the people the more Druids there were 
the better off the people would be, I don't wonder that there 
w ere a good many of them. But it is pleasant to think 
that tl) ere are no Druids now, who go on in that way, and 
pretend to carry enchanters' wands and serpents' eggs ; and, 
of course, there is nothing of the kind anywhere. 

Such was the improved condition of the ancient Britons 



ENGLAND UNDER THE EOMANS. . 5 

fifty-five years before the birth of our Saviour, when the 
Romans, under their great general Julius Caesar, were mas- 
ters of all the rest of the known world. Julius Caesar had 
then just conquered Gaul; and hearing in Gaul a good 
deal about the opposite island with the white cliffs, and 
about the bravery of the Britons who inhabited it (some 
of whom had been fetched over to help the Gauls in the war 
against him), he resolved, as he was so near, to come and 
conquer Britain next. 

So Julius Caesar came sailing over to this island of ours, 
with- eighty vessels and twelve thousand men. And he 
came from the French coast between Calais and Boulogne, 
" because thence was the shortest passage into Britain ; " 
just for the same reason as our steamboats now take the 
same track every day. He expected to conquer Britain 
easily. But it was not such easy work as he supposed ; for 
the bold Britons fought most bravely. And what with not 
having his horse-soldiers with him (for they had been driven 
back by a storm), and what with having some of his vessels 
dashed to pieces by a high tide after they were drawn 
ashore, he ran great risk of being totally defeated. How- 
ever, for once that the bold Britons beat him, he beat them 
twice ; though not so soundly but that he was very glad to 
accept their proposals of peace, n.i go away. 

But in the spring of the next year, he came back; this 
time with eight hundred vessels and thirty thousand men. 
The British tribes chose, as dieir general-in-chief, a Briton, 
whom the Romans in their T'ltin language called Casstvel- 
launus, but whose British name is supposed to have been 
CaswallojST. A brave general he was ; and Well he and his 
soldiers fought the Roman army! So well, that, whenever 
in that war the Roman soldiers saw a great cloud of dust, 
and heard the rattle of the rapid British chariots, they trem- 
bled in their hearts. Besides a number of smaller battles, 
there was a battle fought near Canterbury, in Kent ; there 
was a battle fought near Chertsey, in Surrey ; there was a 
battle fought near a marshy little town in a wood, the cap- 
ital of that part of Britain which belonged to Cassivel- 
IiAIJxus, and which was probably near what is now Saint 
Albans, in Hertfordshire. However, brave Cassivellau- 
nus had the worst of it, on the whole; though he and his 
men always fought like lions. As the other British chiefs 
were jealous of him, and were always quarrelling with him 



6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and with one another, he gave up, and proposed peace. 
Julius Csesar was very glad to grant peace easily, and to go 
away again with all his remaining ships and men. He had 
expected to find pearls in Britain, and he may have found a 
few for any thing I know ; hut, at all events, he found de- 
licious oysters. And I am sure he found tough Britons; 
of whom, I dare say, he made the same complaint as Na- 
poleon Bonaparte, the great French general, did, eighteen 
hundred years afterwards, when he said they were such un- 
reasonable fellows that they never knew when they were 
beaten. They never did know, I believe, and never will. 

Nearly a hundred years passed on ; and all that time there 
was peace in Britain. The Britons improved their towns 
and mode of life; became more civilized; travelled; and 
learned a great deal from the Gauls and Romans. At last, 
the Roman Emperor Claudius sent Atjlus Plautixjs, a 
skilful general, with a mighty force, to subdue the island ; 
and shortly afterwards arrived himself. They did little; 
and Ostorius Scapula, another general, came. Some of 
the British chiefs of tribes submitted. Others resolved to 
fight to the death. Of these brave men, the bravest was 
CaRactacus, or Caradoc, who gave battle to the Romans 
with his army among the mountains of North Wales. 
"This day," said he to his soldiers, "decides the fate of 
Britain! Your liberty, or your eternal slavery, dates from 
this hour. Remember your brave ancestors, who drove the 
great Caesar himself across the sea." On hearing these 
words, his men, with a great shout, rushed upon the Ro- 
mans. But the strong Roman swords and armor were too 
much for the weaker British weapons in close conflict. The 
Britons lost the day. The wife and daughter of the brave 
Caractacus were taken prisoners; his brothers delivered 
themselves up ; he himself was betrayed into the hands of 
the Romans by his false and base step-mother ; and they 
carried him, and all his family, in triumph to Rome. 

But a great man will be great in misfortune, great in 
prison, great in chains. His noble air and dignified en- 
durance of distress so touched the Roman people, who 
thronged the streets to see him, that he and his family 
were restored to freedom. No one knows whether his great 
heart broke, and he died in Rome, or whether he ever- re- 
turned to his own dear country. English oaks have grown 
up from acorns, and withered away when they were hun- 



ENGLAND UNDER THE ROMANS. 7 

dreds of years old, — and other oaks have sprung up in theii 
places, and died too, very aged, — since the rest of the his- 
tory of the brave Caractacus was forgotten. 

Still the Britons would not yield. They rose again and 
again, and died by thousands, sword in hand. They rose 
on every possible occasion. Suetonius, another Roman 
general, came and stormed the Island of Anglesey (then 
called Mona), which was supposed to be sacred; and he 
burnt the Druids in their own wicker-cages, by their own 
fires. But even while he was in Britain with his victo- 
rious troops, the Britons rose. Because Boadicea, a 
British queen, the widow of the King of the Norfolk and 
Suffolk people, resisted the plundering of her property by 
the Romans who were settled in England, she was scourged 
by order of Catus, a Roman officer ; and her two daugh- 
ters were shamefully insulted in her presence ; and her hus- 
band's relations were made slaves. To avenge this injury, 
the Britons rose with all their might and rage. They drove 
Catus into Gaul ; they laid the Roman possessions waste ; 
they forced the Romans out of London (then a poor little 
town, but a trading-place) ; they hanged, burnt, crucified, and 
slew by the sword, seventy thousand Romans in a few days. 
Suetonius strengthened his army, and advanced to give 
them battle. They strengthened their army, and desper- 
ately attacked his on the field where it was strongly posted. 
Before the first charge of the Britons was made, Boadicea, 
in a war-chariot, with her fair hair streaming in the wind, 
and her injured daughters lying at her feet, drove among 
the troops, and cried to them for vengeance on their oppres- 
sors, the licentious Romans. The Britons fought to the 
last; but they were vanquished with great slaughter, and 
the unhappy queen took poison. 

Still the spirit of the Britons was not broken. When 
Suetonius left the country, they fell upon his troops, and 
retook the Island of Anglesey. Agricola came fifteen 
or twenty years afterwards, and retook it once more, and 
devoted seven years to subduing the country, especially 
that part of it which is now called Scotland ; but its peo- 
ple, the Caledonians, resisted him at every inch of ground. 
They fought the bloodiest battles with him; they killed 
their very wives and children, to prevent his making prison- 
ers of them; they fell, fighting, in such great numbers 
that certain hills in Scotland are yet supposed to be vast 



8 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

heaps of stones piled up above their graves. Hadrian 
came thirty years afterwards ; and still they resisted him. 
Severus came nearly a hundred years afterwards; and 
they worried his great army like dogs, and rejoiced to see 
them die, by thousands, in the bogs and swamps. Cara- 
calla, the son and successor of Severus, did the most to 
conquer them, for a time ; but not by force of arms. He 
knew how little that would do. He yielded up a quantity 
of land to the Caledonians, and gave the Britons the same 
privileges as the Romans possessed. There was peace after 
this for seventy years. 

Then new enemies arose. They were the Saxons, a 
fierce, seafaring people from the countries to the north of 
the Rhine, the great river of Germany, on the banks of 
which the best grapes grow to make the German wine. 
They began to come in pirate-ships to the sea-coast of 
Gaul and Britain, and to plunder them. They were re- 
pulsed by Carausius, a native either of Belgium or of 
Britain, who was appointed by the Romans to the command, 
and under whom the Britons first began to fight upon the 
sea. But after this time they renewed their ravages. A 
few years more, and the Scots (which was then the name 
for the people of Ireland) and the Picts, a northern people, 
began to make frequent plundering incursions into the South 
of Britain. All these attacks were repeated, at intervals, 
during two hundred years, and through a long succession 
of Roman emperors and chiefs; during all which length 
of time, the Britons rose against the Romans, over and over 
again. At last, in the days of the Roman Honorius, when 
the Roman power all over the world was fast declining, and 
when Rome wanted all her soldiers at home, the Romans 
abandoned all hope of conquering Britain, and went away. 
And still, at last as at first, the Britons rose against them 
in their old brave manner ; for, a very little while before, 
they had turned away the Roman magistrates, and declared 
themselves an independent people. 

Five hundred years had passed since Julius Caesar's first 
invasion of the Island, when the Romans departed from it 
forever. In the course of that time, although they had 
been the cause of terrible fighting and bloodshed,, they had 
done much to improve the condition of the Britons. They 
had made great military-roads ; they had built forts ; they 
had taught them how to dress and arm themselves much 



ENGLAND UNDER THE ROMANS. 9 

better than they had ever known how to do before ; they 
had refined the whole British way of living. Agricola 
had built a great wall of earth, more than seventy miles 
long, extending from Newcastle to beyond Carlisle, for the 
purpose of keeping out the Picts and Scots ; Hadrian had 
strengthened it ; Severus, finding it much in want of re- 
pair, had built it afresh of stone. Above all, it was in the 
Roman time, and by means of Roman ships, that the Chris- 
tian religion was first brought into Britain, and its people 
first taught the great lesson, that, to be good in the sight 
of God, they must love their neighbors as themselves, and 
do unto others as they would "be done by. The Druids de- 
clared that it was very wicked to believe in any such thing, 
and cursed all the people who did believe it, very heartily. 
But when the people found that they were none the better 
for the blessings of the Druids, and none the worse for the 
curses of the Druids, but that the sun shone and the rain 
fell without consulting the Druids at all, they just began to 
think that the Druids were mere men, and that it signified 
very little whether they cursed or blessed. After which, 
the pupils of the Druids fell off greatly in numbers, and 
the Druids took to other trades. 

Thus I have come to the end of the Roman time in Eng- 
land. It is but little that is known of those five hundred 
years; but some remains of them are still found. Often, 
when laborers are digging up the ground to make founda- 
tions for houses or churches, they light on rusty monej' - 
that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments of plates 
from which they ate, of goblets from which they drank, and 
of pavement on which they trod, are discovered among the 
earth that is broken by the plough, or the dust that is 
crumbled by the gardener's spade. Wells that the Romans 
sun'k still yield water ; roads that the Romans made form 
part of our highways. In some old battle-fields, British 
spear-heads and Roman armor have been found, mingled 
together in decay, as they" fell in the thick pressure of the 
fight. Traces of Roman camps, overgrown with grass, and 
of mounds that are the burial-places of heaps of Britons, 
are to be seen in almost all parts of the country. Across 
the bleak moors of Northumberland, the wall of Severus, 
overrun with moss and weeds, still stretches, a strong ruin ; 
and the shepherds and their dogs lie sleeping on it in the 
summer weather. On Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge yet 



10 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

stands, — a monument of the earlier time when the Roman 
name was unknown in Britain, and when the Druids, with 
their best magic-wands, could not have written it in the 
sands of the wild sea-shore. 



ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS. 11 



| CHAPTER II. 

ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS. 

The Eomans had scarcely gone away from Britain when 
the Britons began to wish they had never left it. For the 
Eoman soldiers being gone, and the Britons being much 
reduced in numbers by their long wars, the Picts and Scots 
come pouring in over the broken and unguarded wall of 
Seyerus in swarms. They plundered the richest towns, 
and killed the people; and came back so often for more 
booty and more slaughter, that the unfortunate Britons 
lived a life of terror. As if the Picts and Scots were not 
bad enough on land, the Saxons attacked the islanders by 
sea ; and, as if something more were still wanting to make 
them miserable, they quarrelled bitterly among themselves 
as to what prayers they ought to say, and how they ought 
to say them. The priests, being very angry with one 
another on these questions, cursed one another in the hearti- 
est manner; and (uncommonly like the old Druids) 
cursed all the peop 1 . \om they could not persuade. So 
altogether the Britons were very badly off, you may be- 
lieve. 

They were in such distress, in short, that they sent a 
letter to Rome, entreating help (which they called the 
groans of the Britons), and in which they said, " The bar- 
barians chase us into the sea ; the sea throws us back upon 
the barbarians ; and we have only the hard choice left us of 
perishing by the sword, or perishing by the waves." But 
the B-omans could not help them, even if they were so in- 
clined; for they had enough to do to defend themselves 
against their own enemies, who were then very fierce and 
strong. At last the Britons, unable to bear their hard con- 
dition any longer, resolved to make peace with the Saxons, 
and to invite the Saxons to come into their country, and 
help them to keep out the Picts and Scots. 



12 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

It was a British prince named Vortigern who took 
this resolution, and who made a treaty of friendship with 
Hengist and Horsa, two Saxon chiefs. Both of these 
names, in the old Saxon language, signify horse ; for the 
Saxons, like many other nations in a rough state, were fond 
of giving men the names of animals, as horse, wolf, hear, 
hound. The Indians of North America — a very inferior 
people to the Saxons though — do the same to this day. 

Hengist and Horsa drove out the Picts and Scots ; and 
Vortigern, heing grateful to them for that service, made 
no opposition to their settling themselves in that part of 
England which is called the Isle of Thanet, or to their in- 
viting over more of their countrymen to join them. But 
Hengist had a beautiful daughter named Rowena ; and 
when, at a feast, she filled a golden goblet to the brim with 
wine, and gave it to Vortigern, saying in a sweet voice, 
" Dear king, thy health ! " the king fell in love with her. 
My opinion is, that the cunning Hengist meant him to do 
so, in order that the Saxons might have greater influence 
with him ; and that the fair Rowena came to that feast, 
golden goblet and all, on purpose. 

At any rate, they were married; and long afterwards, 
whenever the king was angry with the Saxons, or jealous 
of their encroachments, Rowena would put her beautiful 
arms round his neck, and softly say, " Dear king, they are 
my people ! Be favorable to them, as you loved that Saxon 
girl who gave you the golden goblet of wine at the feast." 
And really I don't see how the king could help himself. 

Ah ! We must all die ! In the course of years, Vorti- 
gern died (he was dethroned, and put in prison, first, I 
am afraid) ; and Rowena died ; and generations of Saxons 
and Britons died ; and events that happened during a long, 
long time, would have been quite forgotten but for the tales 
and songs of the old bards, who used to go about from feast 
to feast, with their white beards, recounting the deeds of 
their forefathers. Among the histories of which they sang 
and talked, there was a famous one concerning the bravery 
and virtues of King Arthur, supposed to have been a 
British prince in those old times. But whether such a 
person really lived, or whether there were several persons 
whose histories came to be confused together under that 
one name, or whether all about him was invention, no one 
" knows. 



ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS. 13 

I will tell you shortly what is most interesting in the 
early Saxon times, as they are described in these songs and 
stories of the bards. 

In, and long after, the days of Vortigern, fresh bodies 
of Saxons, under various chiefs, came pouring into Britain. 
One body, conquering the Britons in the East, and settling 
there, called their kingdom Essex ; another body settled in 
the West, and called their kingdom Wessex ; the Northfolk, 
or Norfolk people, established themselves in one place ; the 
Southfolk, or Suffolk people, established themselves in 
another; and gradually seven kingdoms, or states, arose in 
England, which were called the Saxon Heptarchy. The 
poor Britons, falling back before these crowds of fighting 
men whom they had innocently invited over as friends, re- 
tired into Wales and the adjacent country, into Devonshire 
and into Cornwall. Those parts of England long remained 
unconquered. And in Cornwall now, — where the sea-coast 
is very gloomy, steep, and rugged; where, in the dark 
winter- time, ships have often been wrecked close to the 
land, and every soul on board has perished; where the 
winds and waves howl drearily, and split the solid rocks 
into arches and caverns, — there are very ancient ruins, 
which the people call the ruins jof King Arthur's Castle. 

Kent is the most famous of the seven Saxon kingdoms, 
because the Christian religion was preached to the Saxons 
there (who domineered over the Britons too much to care 
for what they said about their religion, or any thing else) 
by Augustine, a monk from Borne. King Ethelbert 
of Kent was soon converted; and the moment he said he- 
was a Christian, his courtiers all said they were Christians ; 
after which, ten thousand of his subjects said they were 
Christians too. Augustine built a little church close to 
this king's palace, on the ground now occupied by the beau- 
tiful cathedral of Canterbury. Sebert, the king's nephew, 
built on a muddy marshy, place near London, where there 
had been a temple to Apollo, a church dedicated to Saint 
Peter ; which is now Westminster Abbey. And in London 
itself,, on the foundation of a temple to Diana, he built 
another little church ; which has risen up since that old time 
to be Saint Paul's. 

After the death of Ethelbert, Edwin, King of North- 
n nbria, who was such a good king that it was said a woman 
ov child might openly carry a purse of gold, in his reign, 
2 



14 A CHILD'S HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. 

without fear, allowed his child to be baptized, and held a 
great council to consider whether he and his people should 
all be Christians or not. It was decided that they should 
be. Coifi, the chief priest of the old religion, made a 
great speech on the occasion. In this discourse, he told the 
people that he had found out the old gods to be impostors. 
"lam quite satisfied of it," he said. " Look at me ! I 
have been serving them all my life, and they have done 
nothing for me ; whereas, if they had been really powerful, 
they could not have decently done less, in return for all I 
have done for them, than make my fortune. As they have 
never made my fortune, I am quite convinced they are im- 
postors." When this singular priest had finished speak- 
ing, he hastily armed himself with sword and lance, mounted 
a war-horse, rode at a furious gallop, in sight of all the peo- 
ple, to the temple, and flung his lance against it, as an insult. 
From that time, the Christian religion spread itself among 
the Saxons, and became their faith. 

The next very famous prince was Egbert. He lived 
about a hundred and fifty years afterwards, and claimed to 
have a better right to the throne of Wessex than Beortric, 
another Saxon prince who was at the head of that kingdom, 
and who married Edburga, the daughter of Offa, king 
of another of the seven kingdoms. This Queen Edburga 
was a handsome murderess, who poisoned people when they 
offended her. One day she mixed a cup of poison for a cer- 
tain noble belonging to the court ; but her husband drank 
of it too, by mistake, and died. Upon this, the people re- 
volted in great crowds; and running to the palace, and 
thundering at the gates, cried, "Down with the wicked 
queen who poisons men ! " They drove her out of the 
country, and abolished the title she had disgraced. When 
years had passed away, some travellers came home from 
Italy, and said that in the town of Pavia they had seen a 
ragged beggar-woman, — who had once been handsome, but 
was then shrivelled, bent, arid yellow, — wandering about 
the streets, crying for bread ; and that this beggar-woman 
was the poisoning English queen. It was, indeed, Edbur- 
ga ; and so she died, without a shelter for her wretched 
head. 

Egbert, not considering himself safe in England, in 
consequence of his having claimed* the crown of Wet- 
(for he thought his rival might take him prisoner and j 



ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS. 15 

hini to death), sought refuge at the court of Charlemagne, 
King of France. On the death of Beortric, so unhappily 
poisoned by mistake, Egbert came back to Britain ; suc- 
ceeded to the throne of Wessex; conquered some of the 
other monarchs of the seven kingdoms ; added their terri- 
tories to his own : and, for the first time, called the country 
over which he ruled, England. 

And now new enemies arose, who, for a long time, troubled 
England sorely. These were the Northmen, — the people of 
Denmark and Norway ; whom the English called the Danes. 
They were a warlike people, quite at home upon the sea ; not 
Christians; very daring and cruel. They came over in 
ships, and plundered and burned wheresoever they landed. 
Once they beat Egbert in battle. Once Egbert beat 
them. But they cared no more for being beaten than the 
English themselves. In the four following short reigns, — of 
Ethelwulf, and his sons, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and 
Ethelred, — they came back, over and over again, burning 
and plundering, and laying England waste. In the last- 
mentioned reign, they seized Edmund, King of East Eng- 
land, and bound him to a tree. Then they proposed to 
him that he should change his religion ; but he, being a 
good Christian, steadily refused. Upon that, they beat 
him; made cowardly jests upon him, all defenceless as he 
was ; shot arrows at him ; and finally struck off his head. 
It is impossible to say whose head they might have struck 
off next, but for the death of King Ethelred from a 
wound he had received in fighting against them, and the 
succession to his throne of the best and wisest king that 
ever lived in England. 



16 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER III. 

ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED. 

Alfred the Great was a young man three and 
twenty years of age when he became king. Twice in his 
childhood he had been taken to Rome, where the Saxon 
nobles were in the habit of going on journeys which they 
supposed to be religious; and once he had staid for 
some time, in Paris. Learning, however, was so little 
cared for then, that at twelve years old he had not been 
taught to read; although, of the sons of King Ethed- 
wulf, he, the youngest, was the favorite. But he had — 
as most men who grow up to be great and good are 
generally found to have had — an excellent mother; and 
one day this lady, whose name was Osburga, happened, 
as she was sitting among her sons, to read a book of 
Saxon poetry. The art of printing was not known until 
long and long after that period ; and the book, which was 
written, was what is called "illuminated" with beautiful 
bright letters, richly painted. The^ brothers admiring it 
very much, their mother said, " I will give it to that one 
of you four princes who first learns to read." Alfred 
sought out a tutor that very day, applied himself to learn 
with great diligence, and soon won the book. He was 
proud of it all his life. 

This great king, in the first year of his reign, fought 
nine battles with the Danes. He made some treaties with 
them too, by which the false Danes swore they would quit 
the country. They pretended to consider that they had 
taken a very solemn oath, in swearing this upon the holy 
bracelets that they wore, and which were always buried 
with them when they died. But they cared little for it ; 
for they thought nothing of breaking oaths, and treaties 
too, as soon as it suited their purpose, and coming back 
again to fight, plunder, and burn, as usual. One fatal win- 



ALFRED THE GREAT. 17 

ter, in the fourth year of King Alfred's reign, they 
spread themselves in great numbers over the whole of Eng- 
land ; and so dispersed and routed the king's soldiers, that 
the king was left alone, and was obliged to disguise him- 
self as a common peasant, and to take refuge in the cottage 
of one of his cowherds, who did not know his face. 

Here King Alfred, while the Danes sought him far 
and near, was left alone one day by the cowherd's wife, to 
watch some cakes which she put to bake upon the hearth. 
But being at work upon his bow and arrows, with which 
he hoped to punish the false Danes when a brighter time 
should come, and thinking deeply of his poor, unhappy sub- 
jects, whom the Danes chased through the land, his noble 
mmd forgot the cakes ; and they were burnt. " What ! " 
said the cowherd's wife, who scolded him well when she 
came back, and little thought she was scolding the king, 
"You will be ready enough to eat them by and by; and yet 
you cannot watch them, idle dog ! " 

At length the Devonshire men made head against a new 
host of Danes who landed on their coast ; killed their chief, 
and captured their flag (on which was represented the like- 
ness of a raven, — a very fit bird for a thievish army like 
that, I think).- The lost of their standard troubled -the 
Danes greatly; for they believed it to be enchanted, — 
woven by the three daughters of one father in a single 
afternoon. And they had a story among themselves, that 
when they were victorious in battle, the raven stretched 
his wings, and seemed to fly ; and that when they were 
defeated, he would droop. He had good reason to droop 
now, if he could have done any thing half so sensible ; for 
King Alfred joined the Devonshire men ; made a camp 
with them on a piece of firm ground in the midst of a bog 
in Somersetshire; and prepared for a great attempt for 
vengeance on the Danes, and the deliverance of his op- 
pressed people. 

But first, as it was important to know how numerous 
those pestilent Danes were, and how they were fortified, 
King Alfred, being a good musician, disguised himself 
as a glee-man or minstrel, and went with his harp to the 
Danish camp. He played and sang in the very tent of 
Guthrum the Danish leader, and entertained the Danes 
as they caroused. While he seemed to think of nothing 
but his music, he was watchful of their tents, their arms, 



18 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

their discipline, — every thing that he desired to know. And 
right soon' did this great king entertain them to a different 
tune ; for, summoning all his true followers to meet him at 
an appointed place, where they received him with joyful 
shouts and tears as the monarch whom many of them had 
given up for lost or dead, he put himself at their head, 
marched on the Danish camp, defeated the Danes with 
great slaughter, and besieged them for fourteen days to 
prevent their escape. But, being as merciful as he was 
good and brave, he then, instead of killing them, proposed 
peace, — on condition that they should altogether depart from 
that western part of England, and settle in the East ; and 
that Guthrum should become a Christian, in remembrance 
of the divine religion which now taught his conqueror, the 
noble Alfred, to forgive the enemy who had so often 
injured him. This Guthrum did. At his baptism, King 
Alfred was his godfather. And Guthrum was an honor- 
able chief, who well deserved that clemency ; for ever after- 
wards he was loyal and faithful to the king. The Danes 
under him were faithful too. They plundered and burned 
no more, but worked like honest men. They ploughed and 
sowed and reaped, and led good, honest English lives. And 
I hope the children of those Danes played many a time 
with Saxon children in the sunny fields ; and that Danish 
young men fell in love with Saxon girls, and married them ; 
and that English travellers, benighted at the doors of Dan- 
ish cottages, often went in for shelter until morning ; and 
that Danes and Saxons sat by the red fire, friends, talking 
of King Alfred the Great. 

All the Danes were not like these under Guthrum ; for, 
after some years, more of them came over in the old plun- 
dering and burning way, •*- among them a fierce pirate of 
the name of Hastings, who had the boldness to sail up 
the Thames to Gravesend with eighty ships. For three 
years there was a war with these Danes ; and there was a 
famine in the country, too, and a plague, both upon human 
creatures and beasts. But King Alfred, whose mighty 
heart never failed him, built large ships nevertheless, with 
which to pursue the pirates on the sea ; and he encouraged 
his soldiers by his brave example, to fight valiantly against 
them on the shore. At last he drove them all away ; and 
then there was repose in England. 

As great and good in peace as he was great and good in 



ALFRED THE GREAT. 19 

war, King Alfred never rested from his labors to improve 
his people. He loved to talk with clever men, and with 
travellers from foreign countries, and to write down what 
they told him, for his people to read. He had studied Latin 
after learning to read English; and now another of his 
labors was, to translate Latin books into the English-Saxon 
tongue, that his people might be interested and improved 
by their contents. He made just laws, that they might 
live more happily and freely ; he turned away all partial 
judges, that no wrong might be done them ; he was so 
careful of their property, and punished robbers so severely, 
that it was a common thing to say, that, under the great 
King Alfred, garlands of golden chains and jewels might 
have hung across the streets, and no man would have touched 
one. He founded schools ; he patiently heard causes him- 
self in his court of justice. The great desires of his heart 
we're, to do right to all his subjects, and to leave England 
better, wiser, happier in all ways, than he found it. His 
industry in these efforts was quite astonishing. Every day 
he divided into certain portions, and in each portion devoted 
himself to a certain pursuit. That he might divide his 
time exactly, he had wax-torches or candles made, which 
were all of the same size, were notched across at regular 
distances, and were always kept burning. Thus, as the 
candles burnt down, he divided the day into notches, almost 
as accurately as we now divide it into hours upon the clock. 
But when the candles were first invented, it was found 
that the wind and draughts of air, blowing into the palace 
through the doors and windows, and through the chinks in 
the walls,* caused them to gutter, and burn unequally. To 
prevent this, the king had them put into cases formed of 
wood and white horn. And these were the first lanterns 
ever made in England. 

All this time he was afflicted with a terrible, unknown 
disease ; which caused him violent and frequent pain that 
nothing could relieve. He bore it, as he had borne all the 
troubles of his life, like a brave, good man, until he was 
fifty-three years old; and then, having reigned thirty 
years, he died. He died in the year 901 ; but, long ago as 
that is, his fame, and the love and e*ri%tr^ade with which 
his subjects regarded him, aw -'inhered to the 

present hour. 

In the next rei g£ s tne reign of Edward, sur- 



20 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

named The Elder, who was chosen in council to succeed, 
a nephew of King Alfred troubled the country by trying 
to obtain the throne. The Danes in the east of England 
took part with this usurper (perhaps because they had hon- 
ored his uncle so much, and honored him for his uncle's 
sake), and there was hard fighting ; but the king, with the 
assistance of his sister, gained the day, and reigned in 
j)eace for four and twenty years. He gradually extended 
his power over the whole of England ; and so the seven 
kingdoms were united into one. 

When England thus became one kingdom, ruled over by 
one Saxon king, the Saxons had been settled in the coun- 
try more than four hundred and fifty years. Great changes 
had taken place in its customs during that time. The 
Saxons were -still greedy eaters and great drinkers, and 
their feasts were often of a noisy and drunken kind ; but 
many new comforts, and even elegances, had become known, 
and were fast increasing. Hangings for the walls of rooms 
(where, in these modern days, we paste up paper) are known 
to have been sometimes made of silk, ornamented with 
birds and flowers in needle-work. Tables and chairs were 
curiously carved in different woods ; were sometimes deco- 
rated with gold or silver ; sometimes even made of those 
precious metals. Knives and spoons were used at table ; 
golden ornaments were worn, — with silk and cloth, and 
golden tissues and embroideries ; dishes were made of gold 
and silver, brass and bone. There were varieties of drink- 
ing-horns, bedsteads, musical instruments. A harp was 
passed round at $> feast, like the drinking-bowl, from guest 
to guest; and each one usually sang or played" when his 
turn came. The weapons of the Saxons were stoutly made ; 
and among them was a terrible iron hammer, that gave 
deadly blows, and was long remembered. The Saxons 
themselves were a handsome people. The men were proud 
of their long, fair hair, parted on the forehead ; their ample 
beards ; their fresh complexions and clear eyes. The beauty 
of the Saxon women filled all England with a new delight 
and grace. 

I have more to tell of the Saxons yet ; but I stop to say 
this now, because, under the Great Alfred, all the best 
points of the English-Saxon character were first encouraged, 
and in him first shown. It has been the greatest character 
among the nations of the earth. Wherever the descendants 



ALFRED THE GREAT. 21 

of the Saxon race have gone, have sailed, or otherwise made 
their way, even to the remotest regions of the world, they 
have been patient, persevering, never to be broken in spirit, 
never to be turned aside from enterprises on which they 
have resolved. In Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the 
whole world over; in the desert, in. the forest, on the sea; 
scorched by a burning sun, or frozen by ice that never melts, 
— the Saxon blood remains unchanged. Wheresoever that 
race goes, there law and industry, and safety for life and 
property, and all the great results of steady perseverance, 
are certain to arise. 

I pause to think with admiration of the noble king, who, 
in his single person, possessed all the Saxon virtue's. 
Whom misfortune could not subdue ; whom prosperity could 
not spoil; whose perseverance nothing could shake. Who 
was hopeful in defeat, and generous in success. Who loved 
justice, freedom, truth, and, knowledge. Who, in his care 
to instruct his people, probably did more to preserve the 
beautiful old Saxon language than I can imagine. With- 
out whom the English tongue in which I tell this story 
might have wanted half its meaning. As it is said that 
his spirit still inspires some of our best English laws, so let 
you and I pray that it may animate our English hearts, at 
least to this, — to resolve, when we see any of our fellow- 
creatures left in ignorance, that we will do our best, while 
life is in us, to have them taught ; and to tell those rulers 
whose duty it is to teach them, and who neglect their duty, 
that they have profited very little by all the years that have 
rolled away since the year 901, and that they are far behind 
the bright example of King Alfred the Great. 



22 A CHILD'S HIST OK Y OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ENGLAND UNDER ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS. 

Athelstal, the son of Edward the Elder, succeeded 
that king. He reigned only fifteen years ; but he remem- 
bered the glory of his grandfather, the great Alfred, and 
governed England well. He reduced the turbulent people 
of Wales, and obliged them to pay him a tribute in money 
and in cattle, and to send him their best hawks and hounds. 
He was victorious over the Cornish men, who were not yet 
quiet under the Saxon government. He restored such of 
the old laws as were good, and had fallen into disuse ; made 
some wise new laws, and took, care of the poor and weak. 
A strong alliance, made against him by Anlaf a Danish 
prince, Gonstantine King of the Scots, and the people of 
North Wales, he broke and defeated in one great battle, 
long famous for the vast numbers slain in it. After that 
he had a quiet reign ; the lords and ladies about him had 
leisure to become polite and agreeable ; and foreign princes 
were glad (as they have sometimes been since) to come to 
England on visits to the English court. 

When Athelstan died, at forty-seven years old, his bro- 
ther Edmund, who was only eighteen, became king. He 
was the first of six boy-kings, as you will presently know. 

They called him the Magnificent, because he showed a 
taste for improvement and refinement. But he was beset 
by the Danes, and had a short and troubled reign ; which 
came to a troubled end. One night, when he was feasting 
in his hall, and had eaten much and drunk, deep, he saw 
among the company a noted robber named Leof, who had 
been banished from England. Made very angry by the 
boldness of this man, the king turned to his cup-bearer, 
and said, " There is a robber sitting at the table yonder, 
who, for his crimes, is an outlaw in the land, — a hunted 
wolf, whose Jife any man may take, at any time. Command 



ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS. 23 

that robber to depart ! " — "I will not depart ! " said Leof. 
"No?" cried the king. "No, by the Lord ! " said Leof. 
Upon that the king rose from his seat, and, making pas- 
sionately at the robber, and seizing him by his long hair, 
tried to throw him down. But the robber had a dagger 
underneath his cloak, and in the scuffle stabbed the king 
to death. That done, he set his back against the wall, and 
fought so desperately, that, although he was soon cut to 
pieces by the king's armed men, and the wall and pave- 
ment were splashed with his blood, yet it was not before he 
had killed and wounded many of them. You may imagine 
what rough lives the kings of those times led, when one of 
them could struggle, half drunk, with a public robber in his 
own dining-hall, and be stabbed in presence of the company 
who ate and drank with him. 

Then succeeded the boy-king Edred, who was weak and 
sickly in body, but of a strong mind. And his armies 
fought the Northmen, — the Danes and Norwegians, or the 
Sea-Kings, as they were called, — and beat them for the time. 
And in nine years Edred died, and passed away. 

Then came the boy-king Edwt, fifteen years of age ; but 
the real king, who had the real power, was a monk named 
Dunstan — a clever priest, a little mad, and not a little 
proud and cruel. 

Dunstan was then Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, whither 
the body of King Edmund the Magnificent was carried to 
be buried. While yet a boy, he had got out of his bed one 
night (being then in a fever), and walked about Glaston- 
bury Church when it was under repair ; and, because he did 
not tumble off some scaffolds that were there, and break his 
neck, it was reported that he had been shown over the 
building by an angel. He had also made a harp that was 
said to play of itself; which it very likely did, as iEolian 
harps, which are played by the wind, and are understood 
now, always do. For these wonders he had been once de- 
nounced by his enemies, who were jealous of his favor with 
the late King Athelstan, as a magician ; and he had been 
waylaid, bound hand and foot, and thrown into a marsh. 
But he got out again, somehow, to cause a great deal of 
trouble yet. 

The priests of those days were generally the only schol- 
ars. They were learned in many things. Having to make 
their own convents and monasteries on uncultivated grounds 



24 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

that were granted to them by the crown, it was necessary 
that they should be good farmers and good gardeners, or 
their lands would have been too poor to support them. For 
the decoration of the chapels where they prayed, and for 
the comfort of the refectories where they ate and drank, it 
was necessary that there should be good carpenters, good 
smiths, good painters, among them. For their greater 
safety in sickness and accident, living alone by themselves 
in solitary places, it was necessary that they should study 
the virtues of plants and herbs, and should know how to 
dress cuts, burns, scalds, and bruises, and how to set broken 
limbs. Accordingly, they taught themselves and one an- 
other a great variety of useful arts, and became skilful in 
agriculture, medicine, surgery, and handicraft. And when 
they wanted the aid of any little piece of machinery, which 
would be simple enough now, but was marvellous then, to 
impose a trick upon the poor peasants, they knew very well 
how to make it ; and did make it many a time and often, I 
have no doubt. 

Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was one of the 
most sagacious of these monks. He was an ingenious smith, 
and worked at a forge in a little cell. This cell was made 
too short to admit of his lying at full length when he went 
to sleep (as if that did any good to anybody !) ; and he 
used to tell the most extraordinary lies about demons and 
spirits, who, he said, came there to persecute him. For 
instance, he related, that, one day when he was at work, the 
Devil looked in at the little window, and tried to tempt 
him to lead a life of idle pleasure ; whereupon, having his 
pincers in the fire, red-hot, lie seized the devil by the nose, 
and put him to such pain, that his bellowings were heard 
for miles and miles. Some people are inclined to think this 
nonsense a part of Dunstan' s madness (for his head never 
quite recovered the fever) ; but I think not. I observe that 
it induced the ignorant people to consider him a holy man, 
and that it made him very powerful ; which was exactly 
what he always wanted. "V 

On the day of the coronation of The handsome boy-king 
Edwy, it was remarked by Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury 
(who was a Dane by birth), that the king quietly left the 
coronation-feast, while all the company were there. Odo, 
much displeased, sent his friend Dunstan to seek him. 
Dunstan finding him in the company of his beautiful young 



ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS. 25 

wife Elgiva, and her mother Ethelgiva, a good and vir- 
tuous lady, not only grossly abused them, but dragged the 
young king back into the feasting-hall by force. Some, 
again, think Dunstan did this because the young king's 
fair wife was his own cousin, and the monks objected to 
people marrying their own cousins ; but I believe he did it 
because he was an imperious, audacious, ill-conditioned 
priest, who, having loved a young lady himself before he 
became a sour monk, hated all love now, and every thing 
belonging to it. 

The young king was quite old enough to feel this insult. 
Dunstan had been treasurer in the last reign ; and he soon 
charged Dunstan with having taken some of the last king's 
money. The Glastonbury abbot fled to Belgium (very 
narrowly escaping some pursuers who were sent to put out 
his eyes, as you will wish they had, when you read what 
follows)^ and his abbey was given to priests who were mar- 
ried ; whom he always, both before and afterwards, opposed. 
But he quickly conspired with his friend Odo the Dane, to 
set up the king's young brother Edgar, as his rival for 
the throne j and, not content with this revenge, he caused 
the beautiful queen Elgiva, though a lovely girl of only 
seventeen or eighteen, to be stolen from one of the royal 
palaces, branded in the cheek with a red-hot iron, and sold 
into slavery in Ireland. But the Irish people pitied and 
befriended her; and they said, "Let us restore the girl- 
queen to the boy-king, and make the young lovers happy ! n 
And they cured her of her cruel wound, and sent her home 
as beautiful as before. But the villain Dunstan, and that 
other villain, Odo, caused her to be waylaid at Gloucester 
as she was joyfully hurrying to join her husband, and to be 
hacked and hewn with swords, and to be barbarously 
maimed and lamed, and left to die. When Edwy the Fair 
(his people called him so because he was so young and 
handsome) heard of her dreadful fate, he died of a broken 
heart; and so the pitiful story of the poor young wife and 
husband ends. Ah ! Better to be two cottagers in these 
better times, than king and queen of England in those bad 
days, though never so fair ! 

Then came the boy-king Edgar, called the Peaceful, 
fifteen years old. Dunstan, being still the real king, drove 
all married priests out of the monasteries and abbeys, and 
replaced them by solitary monks like himself, of the rigid 



26 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

order called the Benedictines. He made himself arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, for his greater glory ; and exercised 
such power over the neighboring British princes, and so 
collected them about the king, that once, when the king 
held his court at Chester, and went on the River Dee to visit 
the monastery of St. John, the eight oars of his boat were 
pulled (as the people used to delight in relating in stories 
and songs) by eight crowned kings, and steered by the king 
of England. As Edgar was very obedient to Dunstan and 
the monks, they took great pains to represent him as the 
best of kings ; but he was really profligate, debauched, and 
vicious. He once forcibly carried off a young lady from the 
convent at Wilton ; and Dunstan, pretending to be very 
much shocked, condemned him not to wear his crown upon 
his head for seven years, — no great punishment, I dare say, 
as it can hardly have been a more comfortable ornament to 
wear than a stewpan without a handle. His marriage with 
his second wife, Elfexda, is one of the worst events of his 
reign. Hearing of the beauty of this lady, he despatched 
his favorite courtier, Athelwold, to her father's castle in 
Devonshire, to see if she were really as charming as fame 
reported. Now, she was so exceedingly beautiful, that 
Athelwold fell in love with her himself, and married her ; 
but he told the king that she was only rich, not handsome. 
The king, suspecting the truth when they came home, re- 
solved to pay the newly-married couple a visit ; and sud- 
denly told Athelwold to prepare for his immediate coming. 
Athelwold, terrified, confessed to his young wife what he 
had said and done, and implored her to disguise her beauty 
by some ugly dress or silly manner, that he might be safe 
from the king's anger. She-promised that she would ; but 
she was a proud woman, who would far rather have been a 
queen than the wife of a courtier. She dressed herself in 
her best dress, and adorned herself with her richest jewels ; 
and when the king came presently, he discovered the 
cheat. So he caused his false friend Athelwold to be mur- 
dered in a wood, and married his widow, this bad Elfri- 
da. Six or seven years afterwards he died, and was buried 
(as if he had been all that the monks said he was) in the 
abbey of Glastonbury, which he — or Dunstan for him — 
had much enriched. 

England, in one part of this reign, was so troubled by 
wolves, which, driven out of the open country, hid them- 



ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS. 27 

selves in the mountains of Wales when they were not at- 
tacking travellers and animals, that the tribute payable by 
the Welsh people was forgiven them, on condition of their 
producing every year three hundred wolves' heads. And 
the Welshmen were so sharp upon the wolves, to save their 
money, that in four years there was not a wolf left. 

Then came the boy-king Edward, called the Martyr, 
from the manner of his death. Elfrida had a son, named 
Ethelred, for whom she claimed the throne ; but Dunstan 
did not choose to favor him, and he made Edward king. 
The boy was hunting one day down in Dorsetshire ; when 
he rode near to Corfe Castle, where Elfrida and Ethelred 
lived. Wishing to see them kindly, he rode away from his 
attendants, and galloped to the castle-gate ; where he arrived 
at twilight, and blew his hunting-horn. " You are welcome, 
dear king," said Elfrida, coming out, with her brightest 
smiles. " Pray you dismount and enter." " Not so, dear 
madam," said the king. "My company will miss me, and 
fear that I have met with some harm. Please you to give 
me a cup of wine, that I may drink here in the saddle to 
you and to my little brother, and so ride away with the 
good speed I have made in riding here." Elfrida, going in 
to bring the wine, whispered to an armed servant, one of her 
attendants, who stole out of the darkening gateway, and 
crept round behind the king's horse. As the king raised 
the cup to his lips, saying "Health !" to the wicked woman 
who was smiling on him, and to his innocent brother whose 
hand she held in hers, and who was only ten years old, this 
armed man made a spring, and stabbed him in the back. 
He dropped the cup, and spurred his horse away ; but, soon 
fainting with loss of blood, drooped from the saddle, and 
in his fall entangled one of his feet in the stirrup. The 
frightened horse dashed on, trailing his rider's curls upon 
the ground, dragging his smooth young face through ruts 
and stones and briers and fallen leaves and mud; until 
the hunters, tracking the animal's course by the king's 
blood, caught his bridle, and released the ' disfigured body. 

Then' came the sixth and last of the boy-kings, Ethel- 
red ; whom Elfrida, when he cried out at the sight of his 
murdered brother riding away from the castle-gate, unmer- 
cifully beat with a torch which she snatched from one of 
the attendants. The people so disliked this boy, on account 
of his cruel mother and the murder she had done to pro- 



28 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

mote him, that Dunstan would not have had him for king ; 
but would have made Edgitha, the daughter of the dead 
king Edgar, and of the lady whom he stole out of the con- 
vent at Wilton, queen of England, if she would have con- 
sented. But she knew the stories of the youthful kings 
too well, and would not be persuaded from the convent 
where she lived in peace ; so Dunstan put Ethelred on the 
throne, having no one else to put there, and gave him the 
nickname of The Unready, — knowing that he wanted 
resolution and firmness. 

At first Elfrida possessed great influence over the young 
king ; but as he grew older, and came of age, her influence 
declined. The infamous woman, not having it in her power 
to do any more evil, then retired from court, and, according 
to the fashion of the time, built churches and monasteries to 
expiate her guilt. As if a church with a steeple reach- 
ing to the very stars would have been any sign of true re- 
pentance for the blood of the poor boy whose murdered 
form was trailed at his horse's heels ! As if she could have 
buried her wickedness beneath the senseless stones of the 
whole world, piled up one upon another for the monks to 
live in ! 

About the ninth or tenth year of this reign, Dunstan died, 
lie was growing old then, but was as stern and artful as ever. 
Two circumstances that happened in connection with him, 
in this reign of Ethelred, made a great noise. Once he 
was present at a meeting of the Church, when the question 
was discussed, whether priests should have permission to 
marry ; and as he sat with his head hung down, apparently 
thinking about it, a voice seemed to come out of a crucifix 
in the room, and warn the meeting to be of his opinion. 
This was some juggling of Dunstan' s, and was probably his 
own voice disguised. But he played off a worse juggle than 
that soon afterwards ; for another meeting being held on 
the same subject, and he and his supporters being seated on 
one side of a great room, and their opponents on the other,, 
he rose and said, " To Christ himself, as Judge, do I com- 
mit this cause ! " Immediately on these words being spoken, 
the floor where the opposite party sat gave way; and some 
were killed, and many wounded. You may be pretty sure 
that it had been weakened under Dunstan's direction, and 
that it fell at Dunstan's signal. His part of the floor did 
not go down. No, no ! He was too good a workman for 
that. 



ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS. 29 

When lie died, the monks settled that he was a saint, 
and called him Saint Dunstan ever afterwards. They 
might just as well have settled that he was a coach-horse, 
and could just as easily have called him one. 

Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare say> to be 
rid of this holy saint ; but, left to himself, he was a poor, 
weak king, and his reign was a reign of defeat and shame. 
The restless Danes, led by Sweyn, a son of the king of 
Denmark, who had quarrelled with his father, and had been 
banished from home, again came into England, and year 
after year attacked and despoiled large towns. To coax 
these sea-kings away, the weak Ethelred paid them monej^ ; 
but the more money he paid, the more money the Danes 
wanted. At first he gave them ten thousand pounds ; on 
their next invasion, sixteen thousand pounds ; on their next 
invasion, four and twenty thousand pounds ; to pay which 
large sums, the unfortunate English people were heavily 
taxed. But as the Danes still came back, and wanted more, 
he thought it would be a good plan to marry into some pow- 
erful foreign family that would help him with soldiers. So 
in the year 1002, he courted and married Emma, the sister 
of Eichard, Duke of Normandy, — a lady who was called 
the Flower of Normandy. 

And now a terrible deed was done in England, the like 
of which was never done on English ground before or since. 
On the 13th of November, in pursuance of secret in- 
structions sent by the king over the whole country, the 
inhabitants of every town and city armed, and murdered all 
the Danes who were their neighbors. Young and old, 
babies and soldiers, men and women, — every Dane was killed. 
No doubt there were among them many ferocious men, who 
had done the English great wrong, and whose pride and inso- 
lence, in swaggering in the houses of the English, and 
insulting their wives and daughters, had become unbearable ; 
but, no doubt, there were also among them many peaceful 
Christian Danes, who had married English women, and be- 
come like English men. They were all slain, even to Gtjn- 
hilda, the sister of the king of Denmark, married to an 
English lord ; who was first obliged to see the murder of 
her husband and her child, and then was killed herself. 

When the king of the sea-kings heard of this deed of blood, 
he swore that he would have a great revenge. He raised 
an army, and a mightier fleet of ships than ever yet had 

3* 



30 . A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

sailed to England. And in all his army there was not a 
slave nor an old man ; but every soldier was a free man, and 
the son of a free man, and in the prime of life, and sworn 
to be revenged upon the English nation, for the massacre of 
that dread thirteenth of November, when his countrymen 
and countrywomen, and the little children whom they loved, 
were killed with fire and sword. And so the sea-kings 
came to England in many great ships, each bearing the flag 
of its own commander. Golden eagles, ravens, dragons, 
dolphins, beasts of prey, threatened England from the prows 
of those ships, as they came onward through the water ; 
and were reflected in the shining shields that hung upon 
their sides. The ship that bore the standard of the king 
of the sea-kings was carved and painted like a mighty ser- 
pent ; and the king, in his anger, prayed that the gods in 
whom he trusted might all desert him, if his serpent did 
not strike its fangs into England's heart. 

And indeed it did. For the great army, landing from the 
great fleet near Exeter, went forward, laying England 
waste, and striking their lances in the earth as they ad- 
vanced, or throwing them into rivers, in token of their 
making all the island theirs. In remembrance of the black 
November night when the Danes were murdered, where- 
soever the invaders came, they made the Saxons prepare 
and spread for them great feasts ; and when they had eaten 
those feasts, and had drunk a curse to England with wild 
rejoicings, they drew their swords, and killed their Saxon 
entertainers, and marched on. For six long years they car- 
ried on this war ; burning the crops, farm-houses, barns, 
mills, granaries ; killing the laborers in the fields ; prevent- 
ing the seed from being sown in the ground - 3 causing famine 
and starvation ; leaving only heaps of ruin and smoking 
ashes, where they had found rich towns. To crown this 
misery, English officers and men deserted; and even the 
favorites of Ethelred the Unready, becoming traitors, seized 
many of the English ships, turned pirates against their 
own country, and, aided by a storm, occasioned the loss of 
nearly the whole English navy. 

There was but one man of note, at this miserable pass, 
who was true to his country and the feeble king. He was 
a priest, and a brave one. For twenty days, the Archbishop 
of Canterbury defended that city against its Danish be- 
siegers ; and when a traitor in the town threw the gates 



ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX BOY-KINGS. 31 

open, and admitted them, he said, in chains, " I will not buy 
my life with money that must be extorted from the suffer- 
ing people. Do with me what you please ! " Again and 
again, he steadily refused to purchase his release with gold 
wrung from the poor. 

At last the Danes, being tired of this, and being assem- 
bled at a drunken merry-making, had him brought into the 
feasting-hall. 

"Now, bishop," they said, "we want gold." 

He looked round on the crowd of angry faces ; from the 
shaggy beards close to him, to the shaggy beards against 
the walls, where men were mounted on tables and forms to 
see him over the heads of others ; and he knew that his time 
was come. 

" I have no gold," said he. 

" G;et it, bishop ! " they all thundered. 

" That I have often told you I will not," said he. 

They gathered closer round him, threatening; but he 
stood unmoved. Then one man struck him ; then another; 
then a cursing soldier picked up from a heap in a corner of 
the hall, where fragments had been rudely thrown at dinner, 
a great ox-bone, and cast it at his face, from which the 
blood came spurting forth ; then others ran to the same 
heap, and knocked him down with other -bones, and bruised 
and battered him ; until one soldier whom he had baptized 
(willing, as I hope for the sake of that soldier's soul, to 
shorten the sufferings of the good man) struck him dead 
with his battle-axe. 

If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the courage of 
this noble archbishop, he might have done something yet. 
But he paid the Danes forty-eight thousand pounds, instead ; 
and gained so little by the cowardly act, that Sweyn soon 
afterwards came over to subdue all England. So broken 
was the attachment of the English people by this time, to- 
their incapable king and their forlorn country, which could 
not protect them, that they welcomed Sweyn on all sides 
as a deliverer. London faithfully stood out as long as the 
king was within its walls ; but, when he sneaked away, it 
also welcomed the Dane. Then all was over ; and the king 
took refuge abroad with the Duke of Normandy, who had 
already given shelter to the king's wife (once the Flower 
of that country), and to her children. 

Still the English people, in spite of their sad sufferings, 



32 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

could not quite forget the great king Alfred and the Saxon 
race. When Sweyn died suddenly, in little more than a 
month after he had been proclaimed king of England, they 
generously sent to Ethelred, to say that they would have 
him for their king again, " if he would only govern them 
better than he had governed them before." The Unready, 
instead of coming himself, sent Edward, one of his sons, to 
make promises for him. At last he followed, and the Eng- 
lish declared him king. The Danes declared Canute, the 
son of Sweyn, king. Thus direful war began again, and 
lasted for three years; when the Unready died. And I 
know of nothing better that he did in all his reign of eight 
and thirty years. 

Was Canute to be king now? Not over the Saxons, 
they said : they must have Edmund, one of the sons of the 
Unready, who was surnamed Ironside, because of his 
strength and stature. Edmund and Canute thereupon fell 
to, and fought five battles. unhappy England ! what a 
fighting- ground it was ! And then Ironside, who was a big 
man, proposed to Canute, who was a little man, that they two 
should fight it out in single combat. If Canute had been 
the big man, he would probably have said yes ; but, being 
the little man, he decidedly said no. However, he declared 
that he was willing to divide the kingdom, — to take all 
that lay north of Watling Street, as the old Roman military- 
road from Dover to Chester was called, and to give Ironside 
all that lay south of it. Most men being weary of so much 
bloodshed, this was done. But Canute soon became sole 
king of England; for Ironside died suddenly within two. 
months. Some think that he was killed, and killed by 
Canute's orders. No one knows. 



CANUTE, 33 



CHAPTER V. 

ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE. 

Canute, reigned eighteen years. He was a merciless 
king at first. After he had clasped the hands of the Saxon 
chiefs, in token of the sincerity with which he swore to be 
just and good to them in return for their acknowledging 
him, he/denounced and slew many of them, as well as many 
relations of the late king. " He who brings me the head 
of one of my enemies," he used to say, " shall be dearer to 
me than a brother." And he was so severe in hunting 
down his enemies, that he must have got together a pretty 
large family of these dear brothers. He was strongly in- 
clined to kill Edmund and Edward, two children, sons of 
poor Ironside ; but, being afraid to do so in England, he 
sent them over to the king of Sweden, with a request that 
the king would be so good as to "dispose of them." If 
the king of Sweden had been like many, many other men 
of that day, he would have had their innocent throats cut ; 
but he was a kind man, and brought them up tenderly. 

Normandy ran much in Canute's mind. In Normandy 
were the two children of the late king, — Edward and 
Alfred by name ; and their uncle the duke might one 
day claim the crown for them. But the duke showed so 
little inclination to do so now, that he proposed to Canute 
to marry his sister, the widow of The Unready ; who, being 
but a showy flower, and caring for nothing so much as be- 
coming a queen again, left her children, and was wedded 
to him. 

Successful and triumphant, assisted by the valor of the 
English in his foreign wars, and with little strife to trouble 
him at home, Canute had a prosperous reign, and made 
many improvements. He was a poet and a musician. He 
grew sorry, as he grew older, for the blood he had shed at 
first ; and went to Rome in a pilgrim's dress, by way of 



34 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

washing it out. He gave a great deal of money to foreign- 
ers on his journey ; but he took it from the English before 
he started. On the whole, however, he certainly became a 
far better man when he had no opposition to contend with ; 
and was as great a king as England had known for some 
time. 

The old writers of history relate how that Canute was 
one day disgusted with his courtiers for their flattery ; and 
how he caused his .chair to be set on the sea-shore, and 
feigned to command the tide as it came up not to wet the 
edge of his robe, for the land was his ; how the tide came 
up, of course, without regarding him ; and how he then 
turned to his flatterers, and rebuked them, saying, what 
was the might of any earthly king to the might of the 
Creator, who could say unto the sea, " Thus far shalt thou 
go, and no farther ! " We may learn from this, I think, 
that a little sense will go a long way in a king ; and that 
courtiers are not easily cured of flattery, nor kings of a lik- 
ing for it. If the courtiers of Canute had not known, long 
before, that the king was fond of flattery, they would have 
known better than to offer it in such large doses. And if 
they had not known that he was vain of this speech (anj^ 
thing but a wonderful speech, it seems to me, if a good child 
had made it ! ), they would not have been at such great pains 
to repeat it. I fancy I see them all on the sea-shore to- 
gether ; the king's chair sinking in the sand ; the king in 
a mighty good humor with his own wisdom ; and the cour- 
tiers pretending to be quite stunned by it ! 

It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go "thus far, and 
no farther." The great command goes forth to all the 
kings upon the earth; and went to Canute in the year 
1035, and stretched him dead upon his bed. Beside it 
stood his Norman wife. Perhaps, as the king looked his 
last upon her, he, who had so often thought distrustfully of 
Normandy long ago, thought once more of the two exiled 
princes in their uncle's court, and of the little favor they 
could feel for either Danes or Saxons ; and of a rising cloud 
in Normandy that slowly moved towards England. 



HAROLD, HARDICANUTE, EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. 35 



CHAPTER VI. 

ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDICANUTE, AND EDWARD 
THE CONFESSOR. 

Canute left three sons, by name Sweyn, Harold, and 
Hardicanute ; but his queen, Emma, once the Flower of 
Normandy, was the mother of only Hardicanute. Canute 
had wfehed his dominions to be divided between the three, 
and had wished Harold to have England ; but the Saxon 
people in the south of England, headed by a nobleman 
with great possessions, called the powerful Earl Godwin 
(who is said to have been originally a poor cow-boy), op- 
posed this, and desired to have, instead, either Hardicanute, 
or one of the two exiled princes who were over in Norman- 
dy. It seemed so certain that there would be more blood 
shed to settle this dispute, that many people left their 
homes, and took refuge in the woods and swamps. Happi- 
ly, however, it was agreed to refer the whole question to a 
great meeting at Oxford, which decided that Harold should 
have all the country north of the Thames, with London for 
his capital city, and that Hardicanute should have all the 
south. The quarrel was so arranged ; and as Hardicanute 
was in Denmark, troubling himself very little about any 
thing but eating, and getting drunk, his mother and Earl 
Godwin governed the south for him. 

They had hardly begun to do so, and the trembling peo- 
ple who had hidden themselves were scarcely at home 
again, when Edward, the elder of the two exiled princes, 
came over from Normandy with a few followers, to claim 
the English crown. His mother Emma, however, who 
only cared for her last son Hardicanute, instead of assisting 
him, as he expected, opposed him so strongly with all her 
influence, that he was very soon glad to get safely back. 
His brother Alfred was not so fortunate. Believing in an 
affectionate letter, written some time afterwards to him and 



36 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

his brother, in his mother's name (but whether really with 
or without his mother's knowledge is now uncertain), he al- 
lowed himself to be tempted over to* England, with a good 
force of soldiers ; and landing on the Kentish coast, and 
being met and welcomed by Earl Godwin, proceeded into 
Surrey, as far as the town of Guildford. Here he and his 
men halted in the evening to rest, having still the earl in 
their company; who had ordered lodgings and good cheer 
for them. But in the dead of the night, when they were 
off their guard, being divided into small parties, sleeping 
soundly, after a long march and a plentiful supper, in differ- 
ent houses, they were set upon by the king's troops, and 
taken prisoners. Next morning they were drawn out in a 
line, to the number of six hundred men, and were barbarous- 
ly tortured and killed; with the exception of every tenth 
man, who was sold into slavery. As to the wretched Prince 
Alfred, he was stripped naked, tied to a horse, and sent 
away into the Isle of Ely, where his eyes were torn out of 
his head, and where in a few days he miserably died. I 
am not sure that the earl had wilfully entrapped him, but 
I suspect it strongly. 

Harold was now king all over England; though it is 
doubtful whether the Archbishop of Canterbury (the great- 
er part of the priests were Saxons, and not friendly to the 
Danes) ever consented to crown him. Crowned or un- 
crowned, with the archbishop's leave or without it, he was 
king for four years; after which short reign he died, and 
was buried, having never done much in life but go a-hunt- 
ing. He was such a fast runner at this, his favorite sport, 
that the people called him Harold Harefoot. 

Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders, plotting 
with his mother (who had gone over there after the cruel 
murder of Prince Alfred), for the invasion of England. 
The Danes and Saxons, finding themselves without a king, 
and dreading new disputes, made common cause, and joined 
in inviting him to occupy the throne. He consented, and 
soon troubled them enough : for he brought over numbers 
of Danes, and taxed the people so insupportably to enrich 
those greedy favorites, that there were many insurrections, 
especially one at Worcester, where the citizens rose, and 
killed his tax-collectors ; in revenge for which he burned 
their city. He was a brutal king, whose first public act 
was to order the dead body of poor Harold Harefoot to be 



HAKOLD, HARDICANUTE, EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. 37 

dug up, beheaded, and thrown into the river. His end 
was worthy of such a beginning. He £ell down drunk, 
with a goblet of wine in his hand, at a wedding-feast at 
Lambeth, given in honor of the marriage of his standard- 
bearer, a Dane named Towed the Proud. And he never 
spoke again. 

Edward, afterwards called by the monks The Confes- 
sor, succeeded ; and his first act was to oblige his mother 
Emma, who had favored him so little, to retire into the 
country, where she died, some ten years afterwards. He 
was the exiled prince whose brother Alfred had been so 
foully killed. He had been invited over from Normandy 
by Hardicanute, in the course of his short reign of two 
years, and had been handsomely treated at court. His 
cause was now favored by the powerful Earl Godwin, and 
he was soon made king. This earl had been suspected by 
the people, ever since Prince Alfred's cruel death : he had 
even been tried in the last reign for the prince's murder, 
but had been pronounced not guilty ; chiefly, as it was sup- 
posed, because of a present he had made to the swinish 
king, of a gilded ship with a figure-head of solid gold, and 
a crew of eighty splendidly armed men. It was his inter- 
est to help the hew king with his power, if the new king 
would help him against the popular distrust and hatred. 
So they made a bargain. Edward the Confessor got the 
throne. The earl got more power and more land, and 
his daughter Editha was made queen ; for it was a part of 
their compact that the king should take her for his wife. 

But although she was a gentle lady, in all things worthy 
to be beloved, — good, beautiful, sensible, and kind, — the 
king from the first neglected her. Her father and her six 
proud brothers, resenting this cold treatment, harassed the 
king greatly by exerting all their power to make him unpop- 
ular. Having lived so long in Normandy, he preferred the 
Normans to the English. He made a Norman archbishop, 
and Norman bishops ; his great officers and favorites were all 
Normans ; he introduced the Norman fashions and the Nor- 
man language ; in imitation of the state custom of Nor- 
mandy, he attached a great seal to his state documents, 
instead of merely marking them, as the Saxon kings had 
done, with the sign of the cross, — just as poor people who 
have never been taught to write now make the same mark 
for their names. All this, the powerful Earl Godwin and 

4 



38 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

his six proud sons represented to the people as disfavor 
shown towards the English ; and thus they daily increased 
their own power, and daily diminished the power of the 
king. 

They were greatly helped by an event that occurred when 
he had reigned eight years. Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, 
who had married the king's sister, came to England on a 
visit. After staying at the court some time, he set forth, 
with his numerous train of attendants, to return home. 
They were to embark at Dover. Entering that peaceful 
town in armor, they took possession of the best houses, and 
noisily demanded to be lodged and entertained without 
payment. One of the bold men of Dover, who would not 
endure to have these domineering strangers jingling their 
heavy swords and iron corselets up and down his house, 
eating his meat and drinking his strong liquor, stood in his 
doorway, and refused admission to the first armed man who 
came there. The armed man drew and wounded him. The 
man of Dover struck the armed man dead. Intelligence 
of what he had done spreading through the streets to 
where the Count Eustace and his men were standing by 
their horses, bridle in hand, they passionately mounted, 
gallopped to the house, surrounded it, forced their way in 
(the doors and windows being closed when they came up), 
and killed the man of Dover at his own fireside. They 
then clattered through the streets, cutting down and riding 
over men, women, and children. This did not last long, 
you may believe. The men of Dover set upon them with 
great fury, killed nineteen of the foreigners, wounded many 
more, and, blockading the road to the port, so that they 
should not embark, beat them out of the town by the way 
they had come. Hereupon Count Eustace rides as hard as 
man can ride to Gloucester, where Edward is, surrounded 
by Norman monks and Norman lords, "Justice!" cries 
the count, "upon the men of Dover, who have set upon 
and slain my people ! " The king sends immediately for 
the powerful Earl Godwin, who happens to be near ; 
reminds him that Dover is under his government; and 
orders him to repair to Dover, and do military execution on 
the inhabitants. " It does not become you," says the proud 
earl in reply, " to condemn without a hearing those whom 
you have sworn to protect. I will not do it," 

The king, therefore, summoned the earl, on pain of ban- 



HAROLD, HARDIGANUTE, EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. 39 

ishment, and loss of his titles and property, to appear before 
the court to answer this disobedience. The earl refused to 
appear. He, his eldest son Harold, and his second son 
Sweyn, hastily raised as many fighting-men as their utmost 
power could collect, and demanded to have Count Eustace 
and his followers surrendered to the justice of the country. 
The king, in his turn, refused to give them up, and raised a 
strong force. After some treaty and delay, the troops of 
the great earl and his sons began to fall off. The earl, with 
a part of his family and abundance of treasure, sailed to 
Flanders ; Harold escaped to Ireland ; and the power of the 
great family was for that time gone in England. But the 
people did not forget them. 

Then Edward the Confessor, with the true meanness of 
a mean spirit, visited his dislike of the once powerful father 
and sons upon the helpless daughter and sister, his unof- 
fending wife, whom all who saw her (her husband and his 
monks excepted) loved. He seized rapaciously upon her 
fortune and her jewels ; and, allowing her only one attendant, 
confined her in a gloomy convent, of which a sister of his, 
no doubt an unpleasant lady after his own heart, was 
abbess, or jailer. 

Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons well out of 
his way, the king favored the Normans more than ever. 
He invited over William, Duke of Noemandy, the son 
of that duke who had received* him and his murdered 
brother long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner's daugh- 
ter, with whom the duke had fallen in love for her beauty 
,as he saw her washing clothes in a brook. William, who 
was a great warrior, with a passion for fine horses, dogs, 
and arms, accepted the invitation; and the Normans in 
England, finding themselves more numerous than ever 
when he arrived with his retinue, and held in still greater 
honor at court than before, became more and more haughty 
towards the people, and were more and more disliked by 
them. 

The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, knew well 
how the people felt ; for, with part of the treasure he had 
carried away with him, he kept spies and agents in his pay 
all over England. Accordingly, he thought the time was 
come for fitting out a great expedition against the Norman- 
loving king. With it he sailed to the Isle of Wight, 
where he was joined by his son Harold, the most gallant 



40 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and brave of all his family. And so the father and son came 
sailing up the Thames to-Southwark ;, great numbers of the 
people declaring for them, and shouting for the English earl 
and the English Harold, against the Norman favorites ! 

The king was at first as blind and stubborn as kings 
usually have been whensoever they have been in the hands 
of monks. But the people rallied so thickly round the old 
earl and his son, and the old earl was so steady in demand- 
ing without bloodshed the restoration of himself and his 
family to their rights, that at last the court took the alarm. 
The Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Norman 
Bishop of London, surrounded by their retainers, fought 
their way out of London, and escaped from Essex to France 
in a fishing-boat. The other Norman favorites dispersed in 
all directions. The old earl and his sons (except Sweyn), 
who had committed crimes against the law, were restored to 
their possessions and dignities. Editha, the virtuous and 
lovely queen of the insensible king, was triumphantly 
released from her prison, the convent, and once more sat 
in her chair of state, arrayed in the jewels of which, when 
she had no champion to support her rights, her cold-blooded 
husband had deprived her. 

The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his restored for- 
tune. He fell down in a fit at the king's table, and died 
upon the th'rd day afterwards. Harold succeeded to his 
power, and to a far higher place in the attachment of the 
people than his father had ever held. By his valor he sub- 
dued the king's enemies in many bloody fights. He was 
vigorous against rebels in Scotland, — this was the time 
when Macbeth slew Duncan, upon which event our English 
Shakspeare, hundreds of years afterwards, wrote his great 
tragedy ; and he killed the restless Welsh King Griffith, 
and brought his head to England. 

What Harold was doing at sea, when he was driven on 
the French coast by a tempest, is not at all certain ; nor 
does it at all matter. That his ship was forced by a storm 
on that shore, and that he was taken prisoner, there is no 
doubt. In those barbarous days, all shipwrecked strangers 
were taken prisoners, and obliged to pay ransom. So, a 
certain Count Guy, who was the lord of Ponthieu, where 
Harold's disaster happened, seized him, instead of relieving 
him like a hospitable and Christian lord, as he ought to 
have done, and expected to make a very good thing of it. 



HAROLD, HARDICANUTE, EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. 41 

But Harold sent off immediately to Duke William of 
Normandy, complaining of this treatment ; and the duke 
no sooner heard of it than he ordered Harold to be escorted 
to the ancient town of Rouen, where he then was, and 
where he received him as an honored guest. Now, some 
writers tell us that Edward the Confessor, who was by this 
time old and had no children, had made a will, appointing 
Duke William of Normandy his successor, and had informed 
the duke of his having done so. There is no doubt that 
he was anxious about his successor ; because he had even 
invited over, from abroad, Edward the Outlaw, a son 
of Ironside, who had come to England with his wife and 
three children ; but whom the king had strangely refused 
to see when he did come, and who had died in London 
suddenly (princes were terribly liable to sudden death in 
those (Jays), and had been buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. 
The king might possibly have made such a will; or, having 
always been fond of the Normans, he might have encour- 
age Norman William to aspire to the English crown, by 
something that he said to him when he was staying at the 
English court. But certainly William did now aspire to 
it ; and, knowing that Harold would be a powerful rival, he 
called together a great assembly of his nobles^ offered 
Harold his daughter Adele in marriage, informed him 
that he meant on King Edward's death to claim the English 
crown as his own inheritance, and required Harold then 
and there to swear to aid him. Harold, being in the duke's 
power, took this oath upon the missal, or prayer-book. It 
is a good example of the superstitions of the monks, that 
this missal, instead of being placed upon a table, was placed 
upon a tub ; which, when Harold had sworn, was uncov- 
ered, and shown to be full of dead men's bones, — bones, as 
the monks pretended, of saints. This was supposed to 
make Harold's oath a great deal more impressive and bind- 
ing. As if the great name of the Creator of heaven and 
earth could be made more solemn by a knuckle-bone, or a 
double-tooth, or a finger-nail, of Dunstan ! 

Within a week or two after Harold's return to England, 
the dreary old confessor was found to be dying. After 
wandering in his mind like a very weak old man, he died. 
As he had put himself entirely in the hands of the monks 
when he was alive, they praised him lustily when he was 
dead. They had gone so far already, as to persuade him 



42 . A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

that lie could work miracles; and had brought people 
afflicted with a bad disorder of the skin to him, to be 
touched and cured. This was called "touching for the 
king's evil," which afterwards became a royal custom. You 
know, however, who really touched the sick, and healed 
them ; and you know his sacred name is not among the 
dusty line of human kings. 



HAROLD THE SECOND. 43 



CHAPTER VII. 

ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND AND CONQUERED BY THE 
NORMANS. 

Ha hold was crowned king of England on the very day 
of the maudlin Confessor's funeral. He had good need to 
be quick about it. When the news reached Norman Wil- 
liam?- hunting in his park at R-ouen, he dropped his bow, re- 
turned to his palace, called his nobles to council, and pres- 
ently sent ambassadors to Harold, calling on him to keep 
his oath, and resign the crown. Harold would do no such 
thing. The barons of France leagued together round Duke 
William for the invasion of England. Duke William 
promised freely to distribute English wealth and English 
lands among them. The Pope sent to Normandy a conse- 
crated banner, and a ring containing a hair which he war- 
ranted to have grown on the head of Saint Peter. He 
blessed the enterprise, and cursed Harold; and requested 
that the Normans would pay " Peter's Pence " — or a tax to 
himself of a penny a year on every house — a little more 
regularly in future, if they could make it convenient. 

King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders, who was a 
vassal of Harold Hakdrada, king of Norway. This 
brother, and this Norwegian king, joining their forces 
against England, with Duke William's help, won a fight 
in which the English were commanded by two nobles, and 
then besieged York. Harold, who was waiting for the 
Normans on the coast at Hastings with his army, marched 
to Stamford Bridge upon the Eiver Derwent to give them 
instant battle. 

He found them drawn up in a hollow circle, marked out 
by their shining spears. Riding round this circle at a dis- 
tance, to survey it, he saw a brave figure on horseback, in a 
blue mantle and a bright helmet, whose horse suddenly 
stumbled and threw him. 



44 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

" Who is that man who has fallen ? " Harold asked of one 
of his captains. 

" The king of Norway," he replied. 

" He is a tall and stately king," said Harold ; " but his 
end is near." 

He added, in a little while, " Go yonder to my brother, 
and tell him, if he withdraw his troops, he shall be Earl of 
Northumberland, and rich and powerful in England." 

The captain rode away, and gave the message. 

" What will he give to my friend the king of Norway ? n 
asked the brother. 

" Seven feet of earth for a grave," replied the captain. 

" No more ? " returned the brother, with a smile. 

" The king of Norway being a tall man, perhaps a little 
more," replied the captain. 

" Bide back ! " said the brother, " and tell King Harold 
to make ready for the fight ! " 

He did so very soon. And such a fight King Harold led 
against that force, that his brother, and the Norwegian 
king, and every chief of note in all their host, except the 
Norwegian king's son, Olave, to whom he gave honorable 
dismissal, were left dead upon the field. The victorious 
army marched to York. As King Harold sat there at the 
feast, in the midst of all his company, a stir was heard at 
the doors ; and messengers all covered with mire, from riding 
far and fast through broken ground, came hurrying in, to 
report that the Normans had landed in England. 

The intelligence was true. They had been tossed about 
by contrary winds, and some of their ships had been wrecked. 
A part of their own shore, to which they had been driven 
back, was strewn with Norman bodies. But they had once 
more made sail, led by the duke's own galley, a present 
from his wife, upon the prow whereof the figure of a golden 
boy stood pointing towards England. By day, the banner 
of the three Lions of Normandy, the diverse colored sails, 
the gilded vanes, the many decorations of this gorgeous 
ship, had glittered in the sun and sunny water ; by night, a 
light had sparkled like a star at her mast-head. And now, 
encamped near Hastings, with their" leader lying in the old 
Bonian castle of Pevensey, the English retiring in all di- 
rections, the land for miles around scorched and smoking, 
fired and pillaged, was the whole Norman power, hopeful 
and strong on English ground. 



HAROLD THE SECOND. 45 

Harold broke up the feast, and hurried to London. 
Within a week his army was ready. . He sent out spies to 
ascertain the Norman strength. William took them, caused 
them to be led through his whole camp, and then dismissed. 
"The Normans/' said these spies to Harold, "are not 
bearded on the upper lip as we English are, but are shorn. 
They are priests." " My men," replied Harold, with a 
laugh, " will find those priests good soldiers ! " 

" The Saxons," reported Duke William's outposts of Nor- 
man soldiers, who were instructed to retire as King Harold's 
army advanced, " rush on us, through their pillaged country, 
with the fury of madmen." 

" Let them come, and come soon ! " said Duke William. 

Some proposals for a reconciliation were made, but were 
soon abandoned. In the middle of the month of October, 
in the^ year one thousand and sixty-six, the Normans and 
the English came front to front. All night the armies lay 
encamped before each other, in a part of the country then 
called Senlac, now called (in remembrance of them) Battle. 
With the first dawn of day, they arose. There, in the faint 
light were the English on a hill; a wood behind them; in 
their midst, the royal banner, representing a fighting war- 
rior, woven in gold thread, adorned with precious stones ; 
beneath the banner, as it rustled in the wind, stood King 
Harold on foot, with two of his remaining brothers by his 
side; around them, still and silent as the dead, clustered 
the whole English army, — every soldier covered by his 
shield, and bearing in his hand his dreaded English battle- 
axe. 

On an opposite hill, in three lines, archers, foot-soldiers, 
horsemen, was the Norman force. Of a sudden, a great 
battle-cry, "God help us!" burst from the Norman lines. 
The English answered with their own battle-cry, " God's 
Rood ! Holy Eood ! " The Normans then came sweeping 
down the hill to attack the English. 

There was one tall Norman knight who rode before the 
Norman army on a prancing horse, throwing up his heavy 
sword and catching it, and singing of the bravery of his coun- 
trymen. An English knight, who rode out from the Eng- 
lish force to meet him, fell by this knight's hand. Another 
English knight rode out, and he fell too. But then a third 
rode out, and killed the Norman. This was in the first be- 
ginning of the fight. It soon raged everwhere. 



46 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The English, keeping side by side, in a great mass, cared 
no more for the showers of Norman arrows than if they 
had been showers of Norman rain. When the Norman 
horsemen rode against them, with their battle-axes they cut 
men and horses down. The Normans gave way. The 
English pressed forward. A cry went forth among the Nor- 
man troops, that Duke William was killed. Duke William 
took off his helmet, in order that his face might be distinctly 
seen, and rode along the line before his men. This gave 
them courage. As they turned again to face the English, 
some of their Norman horse divided the pursuing body of 
the English from the rest ; and thus all that foremost portion 
of the English army fell, fighting bravely. The main body 
still remaining firm, heedless of the Norman arrows, and 
with their battle-axes cutting down the crowds of horsemen 
when they rode up, like forests of young trees, Duke Wil- 
liam pretended to retreat. The eager English followed. 
The Norman army closed again, and fell upon them with 
great slaughter. 

" Still," said Duke William, " there are thousands of the 
English, firm as rocks around their king. Shoot upward, 
Norman archers, that your arrows may fall down upon their 
faces." 

The sun rose high, and sank, and the battle still raged. 
Through all the wild October day, the clash and din re- 
sounded in the air. In the red sunset, and in the white moon- 
light, heaps upon heaps of dead men lay strewed, a dreadful 
spectacle, all over the ground. King Harold, wounded with 
an arrow in the eye, was nearly blind. His brothers were 
already killed. Twenty Norman knights, whose battered 
armor had flashed fiery and golden in the sunshine all day 
long, and now looked silvery in the moonlight, dashed for- 
ward to seize the royal banner from the English knights and 
soldiers, still faithfully collected round their blinded king. 
The king received a mortal wound, and dropped. The Eng- 
lish broke and fled. The Normans rallied, and the day was 
lost. 

Oh, what a sight beneath the moon and stars ! when lights 
were shining in the tent of the victorious Duke William, 
which was pitched near the spot where Harold fell ; and 
he and his knights were carousing within; and soldiers 
with torches, going slowly to and fro, without, sought for 



HAROLD THE SECOND. 47 

the corpse of Harold among piles of dead j and the war- 
rior, worked in golden thread and precious stones, lay low, 
all torn and soiled with blood ; and the three Norman Hons 
kept watch over the field. 



48 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE NORMAN CONQUEROR. 

Upon the ground where the brave Harold fell, William 
the Norman afterwards founded an abbey, which, under the 
name of Battle Abbey, was a rich and splendid place 
through many a troubled year, though now it is a gray ruin 
overgrown with ivy. But the first work he had to do was 
to conquer the English thoroughly ; and that, as you know 
by this time, was hard work for an y man. 

He ravaged several counties ; he burned and plundered 
maity towns ; he laid waste scores upon scores of miles of 
pleasant country; he destroyed innumerable lives. At 
length Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, with other 
representatives of the clergy and the people, went to his 
camp, and submitted to him. Edgar, the insignificant son 
of Edmund Ironside, was proclaimed king by others, but 
nothing came of it. He fled to Scotland afterwards, where 
his sister, who was young and beautiful, married the Scot- 
tish king. Edgar himself was not important enough for 
anybody to care much about him. 

On Christmas Day, William was crowned in Westminster 
Abbey, under the title of William the First; but he is 
best known as William the Conqueror. It was a strange 
coronation. One of the bishops who performed the cere- 
mony asked the Normans, in French, if they Would have 
Duke William for their king. They answered, Yes. Ano- 
ther of the bishops put the same question to the Saxons, in 
English. They, too, answered Yes, with a loud shout. The 
noise, being heard by a guard of Norman horse-soldiers out- 
side, was mistaken for resistance on the part of the English. 
The guard instantly set fire to the neighboring houses, and 
a tumult ensued; in the midst of which the king, being left 
alone in the abbey, with a few priests (and they all being 
in a terrible fright together), was hurriedly crowned. When 



WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 49 

the crown was placed upon his head, he swore to govern the 
English as "^H as the best of their own monarchs. I dare- 
say you think, as I do, that, if we except the Great Alfred, 
he might pretty easily have done that. 

Numbers of the English nobles had been killed in the 
last di .xous battle. Their estates, and the estates of 
all the nobles who had fought against him there, King Wil- 
liam seized upon, and gave to his own Norman knights and 
nobles. Many great English families of the present time 
acquired their English lands in this way, and are very 
proud of it. 

But what is got by force must be maintained by force. 
These nobles were obliged to build castles all over England, 
to defend their new property ; and, do what he would, the 
king could neither soothe nor quell the nation as he wished. 
He gradually introduced the Norman language and the 
Norman customs ; yet, for a long time, the great body of 
the English remained sullen and revengeful. On his going 
over to Normandy, to visit his subjects there, the oppres- 
sions of his half-brother Odo, whom he left in charge of 
his English kingdom, drove the people mad. The men of 
Kent even invited over, to take possession of Dover, their 
old enemy, Count Eustace of Boulogne, who had led the 
fray when the Dover man was slain at his own fireside. 
The men of Pereford, aided by the Welsh, and commanded 
by a chief named Edric the Wild, drove the Normans 
out of their country. Some of those who had been dis- 
possessed of their lands banded together in the North of 
England; some in Scotland; some in the thick woods and 
marshes : and whensoever they could fall upon the Normans, 
or upon the Euglish who had submitted to the Normans, 
khey fought, despoiled, and murdered, like the desperate 
outlaws that they were. Conspiracies were set on foot for 
a general massacre of the Normans, like the old massacre 
of the Danes. In short, the English were in a murderous 
mood all through the kingdom. 

King William, fearing he might lose his conquest, came 
back, and tried to pacify the London people by soft words. 
He then set forth to repress the country people by stern 
deeds. Among the towns which he besieged, and where he 
killed and maimed the inhabitants without any distinction, 
sparing none, young or old, armed or unarmed, were Oxford, 
Warwick, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, York. 
5 



50 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

In all these places, and in many others, fire and sword 
worked their utmost horrors, and made the land dreadful to 
behold. The streams and rivers were discolored with blood ; 
the sky was blackened with smoke ; the fields were wastes 
of ashes ; the waysides were heaped up with dead. Such 
are the fatal results of conquest and ambition ! Although 
William was a harsh and angry man, I do not suppose that 
he deliberately meant to work this shocking ruin, when he 
invaded England. But what he' had got by the strong 
hand, he could only keep by the strong hand; and in so 
doing he made England a great grave. 

Two sons of Harold, by name Edmund and Godwin, came 
over from Ireland with some ships against the Normans, but 
were defeated. This was scarcely done, when the outlaws 
in the woods so harassed York, that the governor sent to 
the king for help. The king despatched a general and a 
large force to occupy the town of Durham. The bishop of 
that place met the general outside the town, and warned 
him not to enter, as he would be in danger there. The 
general cared nothing for the warning, and went in with all 
his men. That night, on every hill within sight of Dur- 
ham, signal-fires were seen to blaze. When the morning 
dawned, the English, who had assembled in great strength, 
forced the gates, rushed into the town, and slew the Nor- 
mans every one. The English afterwards besought the 
Danes to come and help them. The Danes came, with two 
hundred and forty ships. The outlawed nobles joined 
them ; they captured York, and drove the Normans out of 
that city. Then William bribed the Danes to go away, and 
took such vengeance on the English, that all the former 
fire and sword, smoke and ashes, death and ruin, were 
nothing compared with it. In melancholy songs and dole- 
ful stories, it was still sung and told by cottage-fires on 
winter evenings, a hundred years afterwards, how, in those 
dreadful days of the Normans, there was not, from the 
River Humber to the River Tyne, one inhabited village left, 
nor one cultivated field, — how there was nothing but a 
dismal ruin, where the human creatures and the beasts lay 
dead together. 

The outlaws had, at this time, what they called a Camp 
of Refuge, in the midst of the fens of Cambridgeshire. 
Protected by those marshy grounds, which were difficult of 
approach, they lay among the reeds and rushes, and were 



WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 61 

hidden by the mists that rose up from the watery earth. 
Now, there also was at that time, over the sea in Flanders, 
an Englishman named Hereward, whose father had died in 
his absence, and whose property had been given to a Nor- 
man. When he heard of this wrong that had been done 
him (from such of the exiled English as chanced to wander 
into that country), he longed for revenge ; and, joining the 
outlaws in their camp of refuge, became their commander. 
He was so good a soldier, that the Normans supposed him 
to be aided by enchantment. William, even after he had 
made a road three miles in length across the Cambridgeshire 
marshes, on purpose to attack this supposed enchanter, 
thought it necessary to engage an old lady who pretended 
to be a sorceress, to come and do a little enchantment in 
the royal cause. For this purpose she was pushed on before 
the troops in a wooden tower ; but Hereward very soon dis- 
posed of this unfortunate sorceress, by burning her, tower 
and all. 3 

The monks of the convent of Ely, near at hand, how- 
ever, who were fond of good living, and who found it very 
uncomfortable to have the country blockaded, and their 
supplies of meat and drink cut off, showed the king a secret 
way of surprising the camp. So Hereward was soon defeat- 
ed. Whether he afterwards died quietly,' or whether he 
was killed after killing sixteen of the men who attacked 
him (as some olcLrhymes relate that he did), I cannot say. 
His defeat put an . end to the Camp of Refuge ; and, very 
soon afterwards, the king, victorious both in Scotland and 
in England, quelled the last rebellious English noble. He 
then surrounded himself with Norman lords, enriched by 
the property of English nobles ; had a great survey made 
of all the land in England, which was entered as the prop- 
erty of its new owners, on a roll called Doomsday Book ; 
obliged the people to put out their fires and candles at a 
certain hour every night, on the ringing of a bell which 
was called The Curfew ; introduced the Norman dresses and 
manners ; made the Normans masters everywhere, and the 
English servants ; turned out the English bishops, and put 
Normans in their places ; and showed himself to be the 
Conqueror indeed. — 

But, even with his own Normans, he had a restless life. 
They were always hungering and thirsting for the riches of 
the English ; and the more he gave, the more they wanted. 



52 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

His priests were as greedy as his soldiers. We know of 
only one Norman who plainly told his master the king that 
he had come with him to England to do his duty as a faith- 
ful servant, and that property taken hy force from other 
men had no charms for him. His name was Guilbert. 
We should not forget his name ; for it is good to remember 
and io honor honest men. 

Besides all these troubles, William the Conqueror was 
troubled by quarrels among his sons. He had three living. 
Robert, called Curthose, because of his short legs ; Wil- 
liam, called Bufus, or the Red, from the color of his hair ; 
and Henry, fond of learning, and- called, in the Norman 
language, Beattclerc, or Fine-Scholar. When Robert 
grew up, he asked of his father the government of Nor- 
mandy, which he had nominally possessed, as a child, under 
his mother Matilda. The king refusing to grant it, Rob- 
ert became jealous and discontented; and happening one 
day, while in this temper, to be ridiculed by his brothers, 
who threw water on him from a balcony as he was walking 
before the door, he drew his sword, rushed up stairs, and 
was only prevented by the king himself from putting them 
to death. That same night, he hotly departed with some 
followers from his father's court, and endeavored to take the 
Castle of Rouen by surprise. Failing in this, he shut him- 
self up in another castle in Normandy, which the king 
besieged, and where Robert one day unhorsed and nearly 
killed him without knowing who" he was. His submission 
when he discovered his father, and the intercession of the 
queen and others, reconciled them, but not soundly; for 
Robert soon strayed abroad, and went from court to court 
with his complaints. He was a gay, careless, thoughtless 
fellow, spending all he got on musicians and dancers ; 
but his mother loved him, and often, against the king's 
command, supplied him with money through a messenger 
named Samson. At length the incensed king swore he 
would tear out Samson's eyes; and Samson, thinking that 
his only hope of safety was in becoming a monk, became 
one, went on such errands no more, and kept his eyes in his 
head. 

All this time, from the turbulent day of his strange cor- 
onation, the Conqueror had been struggling, you see, at any 
cost of cruelty and bloodshed, to maintain what he had 
seized. All his reign he struggled still, with the same 



WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 53 

object ever before bim. He was a stern, bold man, and he 
succeeded in it. 

He loved money, and was particular in his eating; but he 
had only leisure to indulge one other passion, and that was 
his love of hunting; He carried it to such a height, that he 
ordered whole villages and towns to be swept away to make 
forests for the deer. Not satisfied with sixty-eight royal 
forests, he laid waste an immense district to form another, 
in Hampshire, called the New Forest. The many thousands 
of miserable peasants who saw their little houses pulled 
down, and themselves and children turned into the open 
country without a shelter, detested him for his merciless 
addition to their many sufferings ; and when, in the twenty- 
first year of his reign (which proved to be the last), he 
went over to Rouen, England was as full of hatred against 
him as i£ every leaf on every tree in all his royal forests 
had been a curse upon his head. In the New Forest, his 
son Richard {for he had four sons) had been gored to death 
by a stag; and the people said that this so cruelly-made 
forest would yet be fatal to others of the Conqueror's race. 

He was engaged in a dispute with the King of France 
about some territory. While he staid at Rouen, negotiat- 
ing with that king, he kept his bed, and took medicines ; 
being advised by his physicians to do so, on account of hav- 
ing grown to an unwieldy size. Word being brought to 
him that the King of France made light of this, and joked 
about it, he swore in a great rage that he should rue his 
jests. He assembled his army, marched into the disputed 
territory, burnt — his old way !•— the vines, the crops, and 
fruit, and set the town of Mantes on fire. But in an evil 
hour ; for, as he rode over the hot ruins, his horse, setting 
his hoofs upon some burning embers, started, threw him 
forward against the pommel of the saddle, and gave him a 
mortal hurt. For six weeks he lay dying in a monastery 
near Rouen, and then made his will, giving England to 
William, Normandy to Robert, and five thousand pounds 
to Henry. And now his violent deeds lay heavy on his 
mind. He ordered money to be given to many English 
churches and monasteries, and — which was much better 
repentance — released his_ prisoners of state, some of whom 
had been confined in his dungeons twenty years. 

It was a September morning, and the sun. was rising, 
when the king was awakened from slumber by the sound 

5* 



54 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of a church-bell. "What bell is that ?" he faintly asked. 
They told him it was the bell of the chapel of Saint 
Mary. " I commend my soul," said he, " to Mary ! " # and 
died. 

Think of his name, The Conqueror, and then consider 
how he lay in death ! The moment he was dead, his phy- 
sicians, priests, and nobles, not knowing what contest for 
the throne might now take place, or what might happen 
in it, hastened away, each man for himself and his own 
property; the mercenary servants of the court began to 
rob and plunder ; the body of the king, in the indecent 
strife, was rolled from the bed, and lay alone for hours 
upon the ground. O Conqueror ! of whom so many great 
names are proud now, of whom so many great names 
thought nothing then, it were better to have conquered one 
true heart than England ! 

By and by the priests came creeping in with prayers and 
candles ; and a good knight, named Hekluin, undertook 
(which no one else would do) to convey the body to Caen, 
in Normandy, in order that it might be buried in St. Ste- 
phen's Church there, which the Conqueror had founded. 
But fire, of which he had made such bad use in his life, 
seemed to follow him of itself in death. A great conflagra- 
tion broke out in the town when the body was placed in 
the church ; and those present running out to extinguish 
the flames, it was once again left alone. 

It was not even buried in peace. It was about to be let 
down in its royal robes into a tomb near the high altar, in 
presence of a great concourse of people, when a loud voice 
in the crowd cried out, " This ground is mine f Upon it 
stood my father's house. This king despoiled me of both 
ground and house to build this church. In the great name 
of God, I here forbid this body to be covered with the 
earth that is my right ! " The priests and bishops present, 
knowing the speaker's right, and knowing that the king 
had often denied him justice, paid him down sixty shillings 
for the grave. Even then the corpse was not at rest. The 
tomb was too small, and they tried to force it in. It broke, 
a dreadful smell arose, the people hurried out into the air, 
and for the third time it was left alone. 

Where were the Conqueror's fhree sons, that they were 
not at their father's burial ? Robert was lounging among 
minstrels, dancers, and gamesters in France or Germany. 



WILLIAM THE CONQUERER. 55 

Henry was carrying his five thousand pounds safely away 
in a convenient chest he had got made. William the Ked 
was hurrying to England to lay his hands upon the royal 
treasure and the crown. 



£6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED EUPUS. 

William the Bed, in breathless haste, secured the 
three great forts of Dover, Pevensey, and Hastings, and 
made with hot speed for Winchester, where the royal treas- 
ure was kept. The treasurer delivering him the keys, he 
found that it amounted to sixty thousand pounds in silver, 
besides gold and jewels. Possessed of this wealth, he soon 
persuaded the Archbishop of Canterbury to crown him, and 
became William the Second, King of England. 

Rufus was no sooner on the throne than he ordered into 
prison again the unhappy state captives whom his father 
had set free, and directed a goldsmith to ornament his 
father's tomb profusely with gold and silver. It would 
have been more dutiful in him to have attended the sick 
Conqueror when he was dying; but England itself, like 
this Red King who once governed it, has sometimes made 
expensive tombs for dead men whom it treated shabbily 
when they were alive. 

The king's brother, Robert of Normandy, seeming quite 
content to be only duke of that country, and the king's 
other brother, Eine-Scholar, being quiet enough with his 
five thousand pounds in a chest, the king flattered himself, 
we may suppose, with the hope of an easy reign. But 
easy reigns were difficult to have in those days. The 
turbulent Bishop Odo -(who had blessed the Norman army 
at the battle of Hastings, and who, I daresay, took all the 
credit of the victory to himself) soon began, in concert 
with some powerful Norman nobles, to trouble the Red 
King. 

The truth seems to be, that this bishop and his friends, 
who had lands in England and lands in Normandy, wished 
to hold both under one sovereign ; and greatly preferred a 
thoughtless, good-natured person such as Robert was to 



WILLIAM THE SECOND. , 57 

Rufus; who, though far from being an amiable man in 
any respect, was keen, and not to be imposed upon. They 
declared in Robert's favor, and retired to their castles (those 
castles were very troublesome to kings) in a sullen humor. 
The Red King, seeing the Normans thus falling from him, 
revenged himself upon them by appealing to the English, 
to whom he made a variety of promises, which he never 
meant to perform, — in particular, promises to soften the 
cruelty of the Forest Laws ; and who, in return, so aided 
him with their valor, that Odo was besieged in the Castle 
of Rochester, and forced to abandon it, and to depart from 
England forever ; whereupon the other rebellious Norman 
nobles were soon reduced and scattered. 

Then the Red King went over to Normandy, where the 
people suffered greatly under the loose rule of Duke Rob- 
ert. The king's object was to seize upon the duke's do- 
minions. This the duke, of course, prepared to resist; 
and miserable war between the two brothers seemed inev- 
itable, when the powerful nobles on both sides, who had 
seen so much of war, interfered to prevent it. A treaty 
was made. Each of the two brothers agreed to give up 
something of his claims, and that the longer-liver of the 
two should inherit all the dominions of the other. "When 
they had come to this loving understanding, they embraced, 
and joined their forces against Fine-Scholar, who had 
bought some territory of Robert with a part of his five 
thousand pounds, and was considered a dangerous individ- 
ual in consequence. 

St. Michael's Mount, in Normandy (there is another St. 
Michael's Mount in Cornwall wonderfully like it), was then, 
as it is now, a strong place, perched upon the top of a high 
rock, around which, when the tide is in, the sea flows, leaving 
no road to the main land. In this place Fine-Scholar shut 
himself up with his soldiers, and here he was closely be- 
sieged by his two brothers. At one time, when he was re- 
duced to great distress for want of water, the generous 
Robert not only permitted his men to get water, but sent 
Fine-Scholar wine from his own table ; and, on being re- 
monstrated with by the Red King, said, "What ! shall we 
let our own brother die of thirst? Where shall we get 
another when he is gone ? " At another time the Red 
King, riding alone on the shore of the bay, looking up at 
the castle, was taken by two of Fine-Scholar's men, one 



68 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of whom was about to kill him, when he cried out, " Hold, 
knave ! I am the King of England ! " The story says that 
the soldier raised him from the ground respectfully and 
humbly, and that the king took him into his service. The 
story may or may not be true ; but at any rate, it is true 
that Fine-Scholar could not hold out against his united 
brothers, and that he abandoned Mount St. Michael, and 
wandered about, — as poor and forlorn as other scholars have 
been sometimes known to be. 

The Scotch became unquiet in the Red King's time, and 
were twice defeated, — the second time with the loss of their 
king, Malcolm, and his son. The Welsh became unquiet 
too. Against them Rufus was less successful; for they 
fought among their native mountains, and did great execu- 
tion on the king's troops. Robert of Normandy became 
unquiet too ; and complaining that his brother, the king, 
did not faithfully perform his part of -their agreement, took 
up arms, and obtained assistance from the King of France, 
whom Rufus, in the end, bought off with vast sums of 
money. England became unquiet too. Lord Mowbray, 
the powerful Earl of Northumberland, headed a great con- 
spiracy to depose the king, and to place upon the throne 
Stephen, the Conqueror's near relative. The plot was dis- 
covered ; all the chief conspirators were seized ; some were 
fined, some were put in prison, some were put to death. 
The Earl of Northumberland himself was shut up in a 
dungeon beneath Windsor Castle, where he died an old 
man thirty long years afterwards. The priests in England 
were more unquiet than any other class or power ; for the 
Red King treated them with such small ceremony, that he 
refused to appoint new bishops or archbishops when the 
old ones died, but kept all the wealth belonging to those 
offices in his own hands. In return for this, the priests 
wrote his life when he was dead, and abused him well. I 
am inclined to think myself that there was little to choose 
between the priests and the Red King; that both sides 
were greedy and designing, and that they were fairly 
matched. 

The Red King was false of heart, selfish, covetous, and 
mean. He had a worthy minister in his favorite, Ralph, 
nicknamed — for almost every famous person had a nick- 
name in those rough days — Flambard, or the Firebrand. 
Once the king, being ill, became penitent, and made Anselm, 



WILLIAM THE SECOND. 59 

a foreign priest and a good man, Archbishop of Canterbury. 
But he no sooner got well again, than he repented of his 
repentance, and persisted in wrongfully keeping to himself 
some of the wealth belonging to the archbishopric. This led 
to violent disputes, which were aggravated by there being in 
Eome, at that time, two rival popes ; each of whom declared 
he was the only real, original, infallible pope, who couldn't 
make a mistake. At last Anselm, knowing the Eed King's 
character, and not feeling himself safe in England, asked 
leave to return abroad. The Red King gladly gave it ; for 
he knew that as soon as Anselm was gone he could begin 
to store up all the Canterbury money again for his own 
use. 

By such means, and by taxing and oppressing the Eng- 
lish people in every possible way, the Red King became very 
rich. When he wanted money for any purpose, he raised it 
by some means or other, and cared nothing for the injustice 
he did, or the misery he caused. Having the opportunity 
of buying from Robert the whole duchy of Normandy for 
five years, he taxed the English people more than ever, and 
made the very convents sell their plate and valuables to 
supply him with the means to make the purchase. But he 
was as quick and eager in putting down revolt, as he was in 
raising money; for a part of the Norman people objecting 
— very naturally, I think — to being sold in this way, he 
headed an army against them with all the speed and energy 
of his father. He was so impatient, that he embarked for 
Normandy in a great gale of wind. And when the sailors 
told him it was dangerous to go to sea in such angry weath- 
er, he replied, " Hoist sail and away ! Did you ever hear 
of a king who was drowned?" 

You will wonder how it was that even careless Robert 
came to sell his dominions. It happened thus. It had long 
been the custom for many English people to make journeys 
to Jerusalem, which were called pilgrimages, in order that 
they might pray beside the tomb of our Saviour there. 
Jerusalem belonging to the Turks, and the Turks hating 
Christianity, these Christian travellers were often insulted 
and ill used. The pilgrims bore it patiently for some time ; 
but at length a remarkable man, of great earnestness and 
eloquence, called Peter the Hermit, began to preach in 
various places against the Turks, and to declare that it was 
the duty of good Christians to drive away those unbelievers 



60 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

from the tomb of our Saviour, and to take possession of it 
and protect it. An excitement, such as the world had never 
known before, was created. Thousands and thousands of 
men, of all ranks and conditions, departed for Jerusalem to 
make war against the Turks. The war is called in history 
the First Crusade ; and every Crusader wore a cross marked 
on his right shoulder. 

All the Crusaders were not zealeus Christians. Among 
them were vast numbers of the restless, idle, profligate, and 
adventurous spirits of the time. Some became Crusaders 
for the love of change ; some in hope of plunder ; some 
because they had nothing to do at home ; some because 
they did what the priests told them ; some because they 
liked to see foreign countries; some because they were 
fond of knocking men about, and would as soon knock a 
Turk about as a Christian. Robert of Normandy may have 
been influenced by all these motives ; and by a kind desire, 
besides, to save the Christian pilgrims from bad treatment 
in future. He wanted to raise a number of armed men, 
and go to the Crusade. He could not do so without money. 
He had no money ; and he sold his dominions to his brother, 
the Red King, for five years. With the large sum thus ob- 
tained, he fitted out his Crusaders gallantly, and went away 
to Jerusalem in martial state. The Red King, who made 
money out of every thing, staid at home, busily squeezing 
more money out of Normans and English. 

After three years of great hardship and suffering, from 
shipwreck at sea ; from travel in strange lands ; from hunger, 
thirst, and fever, upon the burning sands of the desert ; and 
from the fury of the Turks, — the valiant Crusaders got pos- 
session of our Saviour's tomb. The Turks were still resisting 
and fighting bravely, but this success increased the general 
desire in Europe to join the Crusade. Another great French 
duke was proposing to sell his dominions for a term to the 
rich Red King, when the Red King's reign came to a sudden 
and violent end. 

You have not forgotten the New Forest which the Con- 
querer made, and which the miserable people whose homes 
he had laid waste so hated. The cruelty of the forest-laws, 
and the torture and death they brought upon the peasantry, 
increased this hatred. The poor, persecuted country-people 
believed that the New Forest was enchanted. They said 
that in thunder-storms, and on dark nights, demons apr 



WILLIAM THE SECOND. 61 

peared, moving beneath the branches of the gloomy trees. 
They said that a terrible spectre had foretold to Norman 
hunters that the Red King should be punished there. And 
now, in the pleasant season of May, when the Red King 
had reigned almost thirteen years, and a second prince of 
the Conquerer's blood — another Richard, the son of Duke 
Robert — was killed by an arrow in this dreaded forest, 
the people said that the second time was not the last, and 
that there was another death to come. 

It was a lonely forest, accursed in the people's hearts for 
the wicked deeds that had been done to make it ; and no 
man, save the king and his courtiers and huntsmen, liked to 
s^ray there. But, in reality, it was like any other forest. 
In the spring, the green leaves broke out of the buds ; in 
the summer, nourished heartily, and made deep shades ; in 
the winter, shrivelled, and blew down and lay in brown 
heaps on the moss. Some trees were stately, and grew high 
and strong ; some had fallen of themselves ; some were 
felled by the forester's axe ; some were hollow, and the rab- 
bits burrowed at their roots ; some few were struck by light- 
ning, and stood white and bare. There were hill-sides 
covered with rich fern, on which the morning dew so beau- 
tifully sparkled ; there were brooks where the deer went 
down to drink, or over which the whole herd bounded, flying 
from the arrows of the huntsmen ; there were sunny glades 
and solemn places where but little light came through the 
rustling leaves. The songs of the birds in the New Forest 
were pleasanter to hear than the shouts of fighting men 
outside ; and even when the Red King and his court came 
hunting through its solitudes, cursing loud and riding hard, 
with a jingling of stirrups and bridles and knives and dag- 
gers, they did much less harm there than among the 
English or Normans ; and the stags died (as they lived) far 
easier than the people. 

Upon a day in August, the Red King, now reconciled 
to his brother, Fine-Scholar, came with a great train to 
hunt in the New Forest. Fine-Scholar was of the party. 
They were a merry party, and had lain all night at Mal- 
wood-Keep, a hunting-lodge in the forest, where they had 
made good cheer, both at supper and breakfast, and had 
drunk a deal of wine. The party dispersed in various di- 
rections, as the custom of hunters then was. The king 
took with him only Sir Walter Tyrrel, who was a fa- 

6 



62 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

mous sportsman, and to whom he had given, before they 
mounted horse that morning, two fine arrows. 

The last time the king was ever seen alive, he was riding 
with Sir Walter Tyrrel, and their dogs were hunting to- 
gether. 

It was almost night, when a poor charcoal-burner, pass- 
ing through the forest with his cart, came upon the solitary 
body of a dead man, shot with an arrow in the breast, and 
still bleeding. He got it into his cart. It was the body 
of the king. Shaken and tumbled, with its red beard all 
whitened with lime and clotted with blood, it was driven in 
the cart by the charcoal-burner next day to Winchester 
Cathedral, where it was received and buried. 

Sir Walter Tyrrel, who escaped to Normandy, and 
claimed the protection of the King of France, swore, in 
France, that the Red King was suddenly shot dead by an 
arrow from an unseen hand, while they were hunting to- 
gether ; that he was fearful of being suspected as the king's 
murderer ; and that he instantly set spurs to his horse, and 
fled to the sea-shore. Others declared that the king and 
Sir Walter Tyrrel were hunting in company, a little before 
sunset, standing in bushes opposite one another, when a 
stag came between them; that the king drew his bow 
and took aim, but the string broke ; that the king then 
cried, " Shoot, Walter, in the Devil's name ! " that Sir 
Walter shot ; that the arrow glanced against a tree, was 
turned aside from the stag, and struck the king from his 
horse, dead. 

By whose hand the Red King really fell, and whether 
that hand despatched the arrow to his breast by accident 
or by design, is only known to God. Some think his 
brother may have caused him to be killed ; but the Red 
King had made so many enemies, both among priests and 
people, that suspicion may reasonably rest upon a less un- 
natural murderer. Men know no more than that he was 
found dead in the New Forest, which the suffering people 
had regarded as a doomed ground for his race. 



HENRY THE FIKST. 



CHAPTER X. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIRST, CALLED FINE-SCHOLAR. 

Fine-Scholar, on hearing of the Red King's death, 
hurried to Winchester with as much speed as Rufus him- 
self had made, to seize the royal treasure. But the keeper 
of the treasure, who had been one of the hunting-party in 
the forest, made haste to Winchester too, and, arriving 
there at about the same time, refused to yield it up. Upon 
this, Fine-Scholar drew his sword, and threatened to kill 
the treasurer; who might have paid for his fidelity with his 
life, but that he knew longer resistance to be useless, when 
he found the prince supported by a company of powerful 
barons, who declared they were determined to make him 
king. The. treasurer, therefore, gave up the money and 
jewels of the crown : and on the third day after the death 
of the Red King, being a Sunday, Fine-Scholar stood before 
the high altar in Westminster Abbey, and made a solemn 
declaration, that he would resign the Church property which 
his brother had seized ; that he would do no wrong to the 
nobles ; and that he would restore to the people the laws of 
Edward the Confessor, with all the improvements of William 
the Conqueror. So began the reign of King Henry the 
First. 

The people were attached to their new king, both because 
he had known distresses, and because he was an English- 
man by birth, and not a Norman. To strengthen this last 
hold upon them, the king wished to marry an English lady ; 
and could think of no other wife than Maud the Good, 
the daughter of the King of Scotland. Although this good 
princess did not love the king, she was so affected by the rep- 
resentations the nobles made to her of the great charity it 
would be in her to unite the Norman and Saxon races, and 
prevent hatred and bloodshed between them for the future, 
that she consented to become his wife. After some disput- 



64 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

ing among the priests, who said that as she had been in a 
convent in her youth, and had worn the veil of a nun, she 
could not lawfully be married, — against which the princess 
stated that her aunt, with whom she had lived in her youth, 
' had indeed sometimes thrown a piece of black stuff over 
her, but for no other reason than because the nun's veil was 
the only dress the conquering Normans respected in girl or 
woman, and not because she had taken the vows of a nun, 
which she never had, — she was declared free to marry, and 
was made King Henry's queen. A good queen she was, — 
beautiful, kind-hearted, and worthy of a better husband 
than the king. 

For he was a cunning and unscrupulous man, though 
firm and clever. He cared very little for his word, and 
took any means to gain his ends. All this is shown in his 
treatment of his brother Robert, — Robert, who had suffered 
him to be refreshed with water, and who had sent him the 
wine from his own table, when he was shut up, with the 
crows flying below him, parched with thirst, in the castle 
on the top of St. Michael's Mount, where his Red brother 
would have let him die. 

Before the king began to deal with Robert, he removed 
and disgraced all the favorites of the late king ; who were 
for the most part base characters, much detested, by the 
people. Fla'rnbard, or Firebrand, whom the late king had 
made Bishop of Durham, of all things in the world, Henry 
imprisoned in the Tower ; but Firebrand was a great joker 
and a jolly companion, and made himself so popular with 
his guards, that they pretended to know nothing about a 
long rope that was sent into his prison at the bottom of a 
deep flagon of wine. The guards took the wine, and Fire- 
brand took the rope; with which, when they were fast 
asleep, he let himself down from" a window in the night, 
and so got cleverly aboard ship and away to Normandy. 

Now Robert, when his brother Fine-Scholar came to the 
throne, was still absent in the Holy Land. Henry pre- 
tended that Robert had been made sovereign of that 
country, and he had"been away so long, that the ignorant 
people believed it. But, behold, when Henry had been 
some time King of England, Robert came home to Nor- 
mandy ! having leisurely returned from Jerusalem through 
Italy, in which beautiful country he had enjoyed himself - 
very much, and had married a lady as beautiful as itself. 



HENRY THE FIRST. 65 

In Normandy, he found Firebrand waiting to urge him to 
assert his claim to the English crown, and declare war 
against King Henry. This, after great loss of time in 
feasting and dancing with his beautiful Italian wife among 
his Norman friends, he at last did. 

The English in general were on King Henry's side, 
though many of the Normans we^re on Robert's. But the 
English sailors deserted the king, and took a great part of 
the English fleet over to Normandy ; so that Robert came 
to invade this country in no foreign vessels, but in English 
ships. The virtuous Anselm, however, whom Henry had 
invited back from abroad, and made Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, was steadfast in the king's cause ; and it was so 
well supported, that the two armies, instead of fighting, 
made a peace. Poor Robert, who trusted anybody and 
everybody, readily trusted his brother, the king; and 
agreed to go home and receive a pension from England, on 
condition that all his followers were fully pardoned. This 
the king very faithfully promised; but Robert was no 
sooner gone than he began to punish them. 

Among them was the Earl of Shrewsbury, who, on 
being summoned by the king to answer to five and forty 
accusations, rode away to one of his strong castles, shut 
himself up therein, called around him his tenants and 
vassals, and fought for his liberty, but was defeated and 
banished. Robert, with all his faults, was so true to his 
word, that, when he first heard of this nobleman having 
risen against his brother, he laid waste the Earl of Shrews- 
bury's estates in Normandy to show the king that he would 
favor no breach of their treaty. Finding, on better infor- 
mation, afterwards, that the earl's only crime was having 
been his friend, he came over to England, in his old 
thoughtless, warm-hearted way, to intercede with the king, 
and remind him of the solemn promise to pardon all 
his followers. 

This confidence might have put the false king to the 
blush, but it did not. Pretending to be very friendly, he 
so surrounded his brother with spies and traps, that Robert, 
who was quite in his power, had nothing for it but to 
renounce his pension, and escape while he could. Getting 
home to Normandy, and understanding the king better 
now, he naturally allied himself with his old friend the Earl 
of Shrewsbury, who had still thirty castles in that country. 
. 6* 



66 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

This was exactly what Henry wanted. He immediately 
declared that Robert had broken the treaty, and next year 
invaded Normandy. 

He pretended that he came to deliver the Normans, at 
their own request, from his brother's misrule. There is 
reason to fear that his misrule was bad enough; for his 
beautiful wife had died, leaving him with an infant son ; 
and his court was again so careless, dissipated, and ill- 
regulated, that it was said he sometimes lay in bed of a 
day for want of clothes to put on, — his attendants having 
stolen all his dresses. But he headed his army like a brave 
prince and a gallant soldier, though he had the misfortune to 
be taken prisoner by King Henry, with four hundred of 
his knights. Among them was poor harmless Edgar 
Atheling, who loved Eobert well. Edgar was not im- 
portant enough to be severe with. The king afterwards 
gave him a small pension, which he lived upon and died 
upon, in peace, among the quiet woods and fields of 
England. 

And Robert, — poor, kind, generous, wasteful, heedless 
Robert, with so many faults, and yet with virtues that 
might have made a better and a happier man, — what was 
the end of him ? If the king had had the magnanimity to 
say with a kind air, " Brother, tell me, before these noble- 
men, that from this time you will be my faithful follower 
and friend, and never raise your hand against me or my 
forces more," he might have trusted Robert to the death. 
But the king was not a magnanimous man. He sentenced 
his brother to be confined for life in one of the royal 
castles. In the beginning of his imprisonment, he was 
allowed to ride out, guarded ; but he one day broke away 
from his guard, and galloped off. He had the evil fortune 
to ride into a swamp, where his horse stuck fast and he was 
taken. When the king heard of it, he ordered him to be 
blinded ; which was done by putting a red-hot metal basin 
• on his eyes. 

And so, in darkness and in prison, many years, he 
thought of all his past life, — of the time he had wasted, of 
the treasure he had squandered, of the opportunities he had 
lost, of the youth he had thrown away, of the talents he had 
neglected. Sometimes, on fine autumn mornings, he would 
sit and think of the old hunting-parties in the free forest, 
where he had been the foremost and the gayest. Some- 



HENRY THE FIRST. 67 

times, ' in the still nights, he would wake, and mourn for 
the many nights that had stolen past him at the gaming- 
table ; sometimes would seem to hear, upon the melan- 
choly wind, the old songs of the minstrels ; sometimes 
would dream, in his blindness, of the light and glitter of 
the Norman court. Many and many a time, he groped 
back, in his fancy, to Jerusalem, where he had fought so 
well; or, at the head of his brave companions, bowed his 
feathered helmet to the shouts of welcome greeting him 
in Italy, and seemed again to walk among the sunny vine- 
yards, or on the shore of the blue sea, with his lovely wife. 
And then, thinking of her grave, and of his fatherless boy, 
he would stretch out his solitary arms and weep. 

At length, one day, there lay in prison, dead, with cruel 
and disfiguring scars upon his eyelids, bandaged from his 
jailer's sight, but on which the eternal heavens looked 
down, a worn old man of eighty. He had once been 
Robert of Normandy. Pity him ! 

At the time when Robert of Normandy was taken pris- 
oner by his brother, Eobert's little son was only five years 
old. This child was taken, too, and carried before the 
king, sobbing and crying ; for, young as he was, he knew 
he had good reason to be afraid of his royal uncle. The 
king was not much accustomed to pity those who were in 
his power, but his cold heart seemed for the moment to 
soften towards the boy. He was observed to make a great 
effort, as if to prevent himself from being cruel, and ordered 
the child to be taken away; whereupon a certain baron, 
who had married a daughter of Duke Eobert's (by name, 
Helie of Saint Saen), took charge of him tenderly. The 
king's gentleness did not last long. Before two years 
were over, he sent messengers to this lord's castle to seize 
the child and bring him away. The baron was not there at 
the time ; but his servants were faithful, and carried the boy 
off in his sleep and hid him. When the baron came 
home, and was told what the king had done, he took the 
child abroad, and, leading him by the hand, went from king 
to king and from court to court, relating how the child had 
a claim to the throne of England, and how his uncle the 
king, knowing that he had had that claim, would have 
murdered him, perhaps, but for his escape. 

The youth and innocence of the pretty little William 
Fritz-Robert (for that was his name) made him many 



68 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

friends at that time. When he became a young man, the 
King of France, uniting with the French Counts of Anjou 
and Flanders, supported his cause against the King of 
England, and took many of the king's towns and castles in 
Normandy. But King Henry, artful and cunning always, 
bribed some of William's friends with money, some with 
promises, some with power. He" bought off the Count of 
Anjou, by promising to marry his eldest son, also named 
William, to the count's daughter; and indeed the whole 
trust of this king's life was in such bargains; and he 
believed (as many another king has done since, and as one 
king did in France a very little time ago) that every man's 
truth and honor can be bought at some price. For all 
this, he was so afraid of William Fitz-Eobert and his 
friends, that for a long time he believed his life to be in 
danger ; and never lay down to sleep, even in his palace, sur- 
rounded by his guards, without having a sword and buckler 
at his bedside., 

To strengthen his power, the king with great ceremony 
betrothed his eldest daughter, Matilda, then a child only 
eight years old, to be the wife of Henry the Ififfch, the Em- 
peror of Germany. To raise her marriage-portion, he taxed 
the English people in a most oppressive manner; then 
treated them to a great procession, to restore their good 
humor; and sent Matilda away, in fine state, with the 
German ambassadors, to be educated in the country of her 
future husband. 

And now his queen, Maud the Good, unhappily died. 
It was a sad thought for that gentle lady, that the only hope 
with which she had married a man whom she had never 
loved — the hope of reconciling the Norman and English 
races — had failed. At the very time of her death, Nor- 
mandy and all France was in arms against England ; for, 
so soon as his last danger was over, King Henry had been 
false to all the French powers he had promised, bribed, and 
bought, and they had naturally united against him. After 
some fighting, however, in which few suffered but the un- 
happy common people (who always suffered, whatsoever was 
the matter), he began to promise, bribe, and buy again ; 
and by those means, and by the help of the pope, who ex- 
erted himself to save more bloodshed, and by solemnly de- 
claring, over and over again, that he really was in earnest 
this time, and would keep his word, the king made peace. 



HENRY THE FIRST. 69 

One of the first consequences of this peace was, that the 
king went over to "Normandy with his son Prince William 
and a great retinue, to have the prince acknowledged as 
his successor by the Norman nobles, and to contract the 
promised marriage (this was one of the many promises the 
king had broken) between him and the daughter of the 
Count of Anjou. Both these things were triumphantly 
done, with great show and rejoicing ; and on the 25th of 
November, in the year 1120, the whole retinue prepared to 
embark at the Port of Barfleur, for the voyage home. 

On that day, and at that place, there came to the king, 
Fitz-Stephen, a sea-captain, and said, — 

" My liege, my father served your father all his life, upon 
the sea. He steered the ship, with the golden boy upon the 
prow, in which your father sailed to conquer England. I 
beseech you to grant me the same office. I have a fair ves- 
sel in the harbor here, called ' The White Ship/ manned 
by fifty sailors of renown. I pray you, sire, to let your 
servant have the honor of steering you in ' The White 
Ship' to England!" 

" I am sorry, friend," replied the king, u that my vessel 
is already chosen, and that I cannot (therefore) -sail with 
the son of the man who served my father. But the 
prince and all his company shall go along with you, in 
the fair ' White Ship/ manned by the fifty sailors of 
renown," 

An hour or two afterwards, the king set sail in the vessel 
he had chosen, accompanied by other vessels, and, sailing 
all. night with a fair and gentle wind, arrived upon the 
coast of England in the morning. While it was yet night, 
the people in some of those ships heard a faint wild cry 
come over the sea, and wondered what it was. 

Now, the prince was a dissolute, debauched young man 
of eighteen, who bore no love to the English, and had de- 
clared that when he came to the throne he would yoke 
them to the plough like oxen. He went aboard " The White 
Ship," with one hundred and forty youthful nobles like 
himself, among whom were eighteen noble ladies of the 
highest rank. All this gay company, with their servants 
and the fifty sailors, made three hundred souls aboard the 
fair " White Ship." 

" Give three casks of wine, Fitz-Stephen," said the 
prince, "to the fifty sailors of renown. My father, the 



70 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

king, has sailed out of the harbor. What time is there 
to make merry here, and yet reach England with the 
rest ? " 

u Prince," said Fitz-Stephen, " before morning my fifty 
and i The White Ship ' shall overtake the swiftest vessel 
in attendance on your father, the king, if we sail at mid- 
night ! " 

Then the prince commanded to make merry; and the 
sailors drank out the three casks of wine, and the prince 
and all the noble company danced in the moonlight on the 
deck of " The White Ship." 

When, at last, she shot out of the harbor of Barfleur, 
there was not a sober seaman on board. But the sails were 
all set, and the oars all going merrily. Fitz-Stephen had 
the helm. The gay young nobles and the beautiful ladies, 
wrapped in mantles of various bright colors to protect 
them from the cold, talked, laughed, and sang. The prince 
encouraged the fifty sailors to row harder yet, for the honor 
of "The White Ship." 

Crash ! A terrific cry broke from three hundred hearts. 
It was the cry the people in the distant vessels of the king 
heard faintly on the water. " The White Ship " had struck 
upon a rock, — was filling, — going down ! 

Fitz-Stephen hurried the prince into a boat, with some 
few nobles. " Push-off," he whispered, " and row to the 
land. It is not so far, and the sea is smooth. The rest of 
us must die." 

But as they rowed away fast from the sinking ship, the 
prince heard the voice of his sister Marie, the Countess of 
Perche, calling for help. He never in his life had been 
so good as he was then. He cried in an agony, "Row 
back at any risk ! I cannot bear to leave her ! " 

They rowed back. As the prince held out his arms to 
catch his sister, such numbers leaped in, that the boat was 
overset. And in the same instant "The White Ship" went 
down. 

Only two men floated. They both clung to the main- 
yard of the ship, which had broken from the mast, ..and 
now supported them. One asked the other who he was ? 
He said, " I am a nobleman, Godrey by name, the son 
of Gilbert de l'Aigle. And you ? " said he. " I am 
Berold, a poor butcher of Rouen," was the answer. Then 
they said together, "Lord, be merciful to us both!" and 



HENRY THE FIRST. 71 

tried to encourage one another, as they drifted in the cold 
benumbing sea on that unfortunate November night. 

By and by, another man came swimming towards them, 
whom they knew, when he pushed aside his long wet hair, 
to be Fitz-Stephen. "Where is the prince ?" said he. 
" Gone, gone ! " the two cried together. " Neither he, nor 
his brother, nor his sister, nor the king's niece, nor her 
brother, nor any one of all the brave three hundred, noble 
or commoner, except we three, has risen above the water ! " 
Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly face,, cried, "Woe! woe to 
me ! " and sunk to the bottom. 

The other two clung to the yard for some hours. At 
length the young noble said faintly, " I am exhausted, and 
chilled with the cold, and can hold no longer. Farewell, 
good friend! God preserve you!" So he dropped and 
sunk ; and of all the brilliant crowd, the poor butcher of 
Rouen alone was saved. In the morning, some fishermen 
saw him floating in his sheep-skin coat, and got him into 
their boat, — the sole relater of the dismal tale. 

For three days, no one dared to carry the intelligence to 
the king. At length they sent into his presence a little 
boy, who weeping bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told 
him that u The White Ship " was lost with all on board. 
The king fell to the ground like a dead man, and never, 
never afterwards was seen to smile. 

But he plotted again, and promised again, and bribed 
and bought again, in his old deceitful way. Having no 
son to succeed him, after^ all his pains (" The prince will 
never yoke us to the plough now ! " said the English 
people), he took a second wife, — Adelais or Alice, a 
duke's daughter,- and the pope's niece. Having no more 
children, however, he proposed to the barons to swear that 
they would recognize as his successor his daughter Matilda, 
whom, as she was now a widow, he married to the eldest 
son of the Count of Anjou, Geoffrev, surnamed Plan- 
tagenet, from a custom he had of wearing a sprig of 
flowering broom (called genet in French) in his cap for a 
feather. As one false man usually makes many, and 
as a false king, in particular, is pretty certain to make 
a false court, the barons took the oath about the succession 
of Matilda (and her children after her) twice over, without 
in the least intending to keep it. The king was now 
relieved from any remaining fears of William Fitz-Eobert, 



72 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

by his deatli in the Monastery of St. Omer, in France, at 
twenty-six years old, of a pike-wound in the hand. And, 
as Matilda gave birth to three sons, he thought the succes- 
sion to the throne secure. 

He spent most of the latter part of his life, which was 
troubled by family quarrels, in Normandy, to be near Matil- 
da. When he had reigned upwards of thirty-five years, 
and was. sixty-seven years old, he died of an indigestion 
and fever, brought on by eating, when he was far from well, 
of a fish called lamprey, against which he had often been 
cautioned by his physicians. His remains were brought 
over to Reading Abbey to be buried. 

You may perhaps hear the cunning and promise-break- 
ing of King Henry the First called " policy " by some 
people, and " diplomacy " by others. Neither of these fine 
words will in the least mean that it was true ; and nothing 
that is not true can possibly be good. 

His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love of learn- 
ing. I should have given him greater credit even for that, 
if it had been strong enough to induce him to spare the 
eyes of a certain poet he once took prisoner, who was a 
knight besides. But he ordered the poet's eyes to be torn 
from his head, because he had laughed at him in his verses ; 
and the poet, in the pain Of that torture, dashed out his 
own brains against his prison-wall. King Henry the First 
was avaricious, revengeful, and so false that I suppose a 
man never lived whose word was less to be relied upon. 



MATILDA AND STEPHEN. 73 



CHAPTER XI. 

ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN. 

The king was no sooner dead, than all the plans and 
schemes he had labored at so long, and lied so much for, 
crumbled away like a hollow heap of sand. Stephen, 
whom he had never mistrusted or suspected, started up to 
claim the throne. 

Stephen was the son of Adela, the Conqueror's daugh- 
ter, married to the Count of Blois. To Stephen, and to 
his brother Henry, the late king had been liberal ; mak- 
ing Henry Bishop of Winchester, and finding a good mar- 
riage for Stephen, and much enriching him. This did not 
prevent Stephen from hastily producing a false witness, a 
servant of the late king, to swear that the king had named 
him for his heir upon his death-bed. On this evidence the 
Archbishop of Canterbury crowned him. The new king, 
so suddenly made, lost not a moment in seizing the royal 
treasure, and hiring foreign soldiers with some of it to pro- 
tect his throne. 

If the dead king had even done as the false witness said, 
ke would have had small right to will away the English 
people, like so many sheep or oxen, without their consent. 
But he had, in fact, bequeathed all his territory to Matilda ; 
who, supported by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, soon began 
to dispute the crown. Some of the p6werful barons and 
priests took her side ; some took Stephen's ; all fortified 
their castles : and again the miserable English people were 
involved in war, from which they could never derive ad- 
vantage whosoever was victorious, and in which all parties 
plundered, tortured, starved, and ruined them. 

Five years had passed since the death of Henry the 
First, — and during those five years there had been two 
terrible invasions by the people of Scotland under their 
King David, who was at last defeated with all his army, — 



74 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

when Matilda, attended by her brother Robert and a large 
force, appeared in England to maintain her claim. A bat- 
tle was fought between her troops and King Stephen's, at 
Lincoln ; in which the king himself was taken prisoner, 
after bravely fighting until his battle-axe and sword were 
broken, and was carried into strict confinement at Glou- 
cester. Matilda then submitted herself to the priests, and 
the priests crowned her Queen of England. 

She did not long enjoy this dignity. The people of 
London had a great affection for Stephen ; many of the 
barons considered it degrading to be ruled by a woman ; 
and the queen's temper was so haughty that she made in- 
numerable enemies. The people of London revolted ; and, 
in alliance with the troops of Stephen, besieged her at 
Winchester, where they took her brother Robert prisoner, 
whom, as her best soldier and chief general, she was glad 
to exchange for Stephen himself, who thus regained his 
liberty. Then the long war went on afresh. Once she 
was pressed so hard in the Castle of Oxford, in the winter 
weather, when the snow lay thick upon the ground, that 
her only chance of escape was to dress herself all in white, 
and, accompanied by no more than three faithful knights, 
dressed in like manner, that their figures might not be seen 
from Stephen's camp as they passed over the snow, to steal 
away on foot, cross the frozen .Thames, walk a long dis- 
tance, and at last gallop away on horseback. All this she 
did, but to no great purpose then ; for her brother dying 
while the struggle was yet going on, she at last withdrew 
to Normandy. 

In two or three years after her withdrawal her cause ap- 
peared in England, afresh, in the person of her son Henry, 
young Plantagenet, who, at only eighteen years of age, 
was very powerful : not only on account of his mother 
having resigned air Normandy to him, but also from his 
having married Eleanor, the divorced wife of the French 
king, a bad woman, who had great possessions in France. 
Louis, the French king, not relishing this arrangement, 
helped Eustace, King Stephen's son, to invade Normandy ; 
but Henry drove their united forces out of that country, 
and then returned here to assist his partisans, whom the 
king was then besieging at Wallingford upon the Thames. 
Here for two days, divided only by the river, the two 
armies lay encamped opposite to one another, — on the eve, 



MATILDA AND STEPHEN. 75 

as it seemed to all men, of another desperate fight, when 
the Earl of Arundel took heart, and said, " that it was 
not reasonable to prolong the unspeakable miseries of two 
kingdoms to minister to the ambition of two princes." 

Many other noblemen, repeating and supporting this 
when it was once uttered, Stephen and young Plantagenet 
went down, each to his own bank of the river, and held a 
conversation across it, in which they arranged a truce ; 
very much to the dissatisfaction of Eustace, who swaggered 
away with some followers, and laid violent hands on the Ab- 
bey of St. Edmund's-Bury, where he presently died mad. 
The truce led to a solemn council at Winchester, in which 
it was agreed that Stephen should retain the crown, on con- 
dition of his declaring Henry his successor; that Wil- 
liam, another son of the king's, should inherit his father's 
rightful possessions ; and that all the crown-lands which 
Stephen had given away should be recalled, and all the 
castles he4iad permitted to be built demolished. Thus ter- 
minated the bitter war, which had now lasted fifteen years, 
and had again laid England waste. In the next year 
Stephen died, after a troubled reign of nineteen years. 

Although King Stephen was, for the time in which he 
lived, a humane and moderate man, with many excellent 
qualities; and although nothing worse is known of him 
than his usurpation of the crown, which he probably ex- 
cused to himself by the consideration that King Henry the 
Eirst was an usurper too, — which was no excuse at all, — the 
people of England suffered more in these dread nineteen 
years than at any former period even of their suffering 
history. In the division of the nobility between the two rival 
claimants of the crown, and in - the growth of what is called 
the Feudal System (which made the peasants the born vassals 
and mere slaves of the barons), every noble had his strong 
castle, where he reigned the cruel king of all the neigh- 
boring people. Accordingly, he perpetrated whatever 
cruelties he chose ; and never were worse cruelties com- 
mitted upon earth than in wretched England in those nine- 
teen years. 

The writers who were living then describe them fearfully. 
They say . that the castles were filled with devils rather 
than with men ; that the peasants, men and women, were 
put into dungeons for their gold and silver, were tortured 
with fire and smoke, were hung up by the thumbs, were 



76 A CHILD'S HISTOBY OF ENGLAND. 

hung up by the heels with great weights to their heads, 
were torn with jagged irons, killed with hunger, broken to 
death in narrow chests filled with sharp-pointed stones, 
murdered in countless fiendish ways. In England there 
was no corn, no meat, no cheese, no butter, there were no 
tilled lands, no harvests. Ashes of burnt towns and dreary 
wastes were all that the traveller, fearful of the robbers 
who prowled abroad at all hours, would see in a long day's 
journey; and from sunrise until night he would not come 
upon a home. 

The clergy sometimes suffered, and heavily too, from 
pillage ; but many of them had castles of their own, and 
fought in helmet and armor like the barons, and drew lots 
with other fighting-men for their share of booty. The 
Pope (or Bishop of Borne), on King Stephen's resisting his 
ambition, laid England under an interdict at one period of 
this reign ; which means, that he allowed no service to be 
performed in the churches, no couples to be married, no 
bells to be rung, no dead bodies to be buried. Any man 
having the power to refuse these things, no matter whether 
he were called a pope or a poulterer, would, of course, have 
the power of afflicting numbers of innocent people. That 
nothing might be wanting to the miseries of King Stephen's 
time, th_;Pope threw in this contribution to the public store. 
— not very like the widow's contribution, as I think, when 
our Saviour sat in Jerusalem over against the treasury, 
"and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing." 



HENRY THE SECOND. .77 



CHAPTER XII. 

england under henry the second. 
Part the First. 

Henry Plantagenet, when he was but twenty-one 
years old, quietly succeeded to the throne of England, ac- 
cording to his agreement made with the late king at Win- 
chester. Six weeks after Stephen's death, he and his queen, 
Eleanor, were crowned in that city ; into which they rode 
on horseback in great state, side by side, amidst much 
shouting and rejoicing, and clashing of music, and strew- 
ing of flowers. 

The reign of King Henry the Second began well. The 
king had great 'possessions, and (what with his own rights, 
and what with those of his wife) was lord of one-third 
part of France. He was a young man of vigo:, ability, 
and resolution, and immediately applied himself to remove- 
some of the evils which had arisen in the last unhappy 
reign. He revoked all the grants of land that had. been 
hastily made on either side during the late struggles ; he 
obliged numbers of disorderly soldiers to depart from Eng- 
land ; he reclaimed all the castles belonging to the crown ; 
and he forced the wicked nobles to pull down their own 
castles to the number of eleven hundred, in which such 
dismal cruelties had been inflicted on the people. The 
king's brother, Geoffrey, rose against him in France, 
while he was so well employed, and rendered it necessary 
for him to repair to that country; where, after he had sub- 
dued and made a friendly arrangement with his brother 
(who did not live long), his ambition to increase his pos- 
sessions involved him in a war with the French king, Louis, 
with whom he had been on such friendly terms just before, 
that, to the French king's infant daughter, then a baby in 
the cradle, he had promised one of his little sons in mar- 
riage, who was a child of five .years old. However, the 

7* 



78 "** A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENQLAND. 

war came to nothing at last, and the Pope made the two 
kings friends again. 

Now, the clergy in the troubles of the last reign had gone 
on very ill indeed. There were all kinds of criminals among 
them, — murderers, thieves, and vagabonds; and the worst 
of the matter was, that the good priests would not give 
up the bad priests to justice when they committed crimes, 
but persisted in sheltering and defending them. The king, 
well knowing that there could be no peace or rest in Eng- 
land while such things lasted, resolved to reduce the power 
of the clergy, and, when he had reigned seven years, found 
(as he considered) a good opportunity for doing so in the 
death of tfee Archbishop of Canterbury. " I will have for 
the new archbishop," thought the king, " a friend in whom 
I can trust, who will help me to humble these rebellious 
priests, and have them dealt with when they do wrong as 
other men who do wrong are dealt with." So he resolved 
to make his favorite the new archbishop ; and this favorite 
was so extraordinary a. man, and his stOry is so curious that 
I must tell you all about him. 

Once upon a time a worthy merchant of London, named 
Gilbert a Becket, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, 
and was taken prisoner by a Saracen lord. This lord, who 
treated him kindly, and not like a slave, had one fair daugh- 
ter, who fell in love with the merchant, and who told him 
that she wanted to become a Christian, and was willing to 
marry him if they could fly to a Christian country. The 
merchant returned her love until he found an opportunity 
to escape, when he did not trouble himself about the Sara- 
cen lady, but escaped with his servant Richard, who had 
been taken prisoner along with him, and arrived in Eng- 
land, and forgot her. The Saracen lady, who was more lov- 
ing than the merchant, left her father's house in disguise 
to follow him, and made her way under many hardships to 
the sea-shore. The merchant had taught her only two 
English words (for I suppose he must have learnt the Sara- 
cen tongue himself, and made love in that language), of 
which London was one, and his own name, Gilbert, the 
other. She went among the ships, saying, "London, Lon- 
don ! " over and over again, until the sailors understood that 
she wanted to find an English vessel that would carry her 
there : so they showed her such a ship ; and she paid for 
her passage with some £>f her jewels, and sailed away. 



f 



HENRY THE SECOND. 79 

Well, the merchant was sitting in his counting-house in 
London one day, when he heard a great noise in the street, 
and presently Richard came running in from the warehouse, 
with his eyes wide open and his breath almost gone, saying, 
" Master, master, here is the Saracen lady!" The mer- 
chant thought Richard was mad; but Richard said, "No, 
master : as I live, the Saracen lady is going up and down 
the city, calling < Gilbert, Gilbert ! ' " Then he took the 
merchant by the sleeve, and pointed out at window ; and 
there they saw her among the gables and water-spouts of 
the dark, dirty street, in her foreign dress, so forlorn, sur- 
rounded by a wondering crowd, and passing slowly along, 
calling " Gilbert, Gilbert ! " When the merchant saw her, 
and thought of the tenderness she had shown him in his 
captivity, and of her constancy, his heart was moved, and 
he ran down into the street ; and she saw him coming, and 
with a great cry fainted in his arms. They were mar- 
ried without loss of time, and Richard (who was an excels 
lent man) danced with joy the whole day of the wedding; 
and they all lived happy ever afterwards. 

This merchant and this Saracen lady had one son, 
Thomas a Becket. He it was who became the favorite 
of King Henry the Second. S 

He had become chancellor, when the king thought of 
making him archbishop. He was clever, gay, well-edu- 
cated, brave ; had fought in several battles in France ; had 
defeated a French knight in single combat, and brought 
his horse away as a token of the victory. He lived in a 
noble palace, h*e was the tutor of the young Prince Henry, 
he was served by one hundred and forty knights, his riches 
were immense. The king once sent him as his ambassador 
to France; and the French people, beholding in what state 
he travelled, cried out in the streets, " How splendid must 
the King of England be, when this is only the chancellor ! " 
They had good reason to wonder at the magnificence of 
Thomas a Becket : for when he entered a French town, his 
procession was headed by two hundred and fifty singing 
boys ; then came his hounds in couples ; then eight wag- 

. ons, each drawn by five horses, driven by five drivers ; 
two of the wagons filled with strong ale to be given away 

.to the people ; four with his gold and silver plate and 
stately clothes ; two with the dresses of his numerous ser- 
vants. Then came twelve horses, each with a monkey on 



80 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

his back ; then a train of people bearing shields, and lead- 
ing fine war-horses, splendidly equipped; then falconers 
with hawks upon their wrists ; then a host of knights and 
gentlemen and priests ; then the chancellor, with his bril- 
liant garments flashing in the sun, and all the people caper- 
ing and shouting with delight. 

The king was well pleased with all this, thinking that it 
only made himself the more magnificent to have so magni- 
ficent a favorite ; but he sometimes jested with the chan- 
cellor upon his splendor too. Once, when they were riding 
together through the streets of London in hard winter 
weather, they saw a shivering old man in rags. •" Look at 
the poor object," said the king. " Would it not be a char- 
itable act to give that aged man a comfortable warm cloak ? " 
" Undoubtedly it would," said Thomas a Becket ; " and you 
do well, sir, to think of such Christian duties." — " Come," 
cried the king, " then give him your cloak ! " It was made 
of rich crimson trimmed with ermine. The king tried to 
pull it off ; the chancellor tried to keep it on. Both were 
near rolling from their saddles in the mud, when the chan- 
cellor submitted, and the king gave the cloak to the old 
beggar, much to the beggar's astonishment, and much to 
the merriment of all the courtiers in attendance ; for 
courtiers are not only eager to laugh when the king laughs, 
but they really do enjoy a laugh against a favorite. 

" I will make," thought King Henry the Second, u this 
chancellor of mine, Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Can- 
terbury. He will then be the head of the Church, and, 
being devoted to me, will help me to correct the Church. 
He has always upheld my power against the power of the 
clergy, and once publicly told some bishops (I remember) 
that men of the Church were equally bound to me with 
men of the sword. Thomas a Becket is the man, of all 
other men in England, to help me in my great design." 
So the king, regardless of all objection, either that he was 
a fighting man, or a lavish man, or a courtly man, or a man 
of pleasure, or any thing but a likely man for the office, 
made him archbishop accordingly. 

Now, Thomas a Becket was proud, and loved to be fa- 
mous. He was already famous for the pomp of his life, — 
for his riches, his gold and silver plate, his wagons, horses, 
and attendants. He could do no more in that way than 
he had done j and, being tired of that kind of fame (which 






HENRY THE SECOND. 81 

is a poor one), he longed to have his name celebrated for 
something else. Nothing, he knew, would render him so 
famous in the world as the setting of his utmost power and 
ability against the utmost power and ability of the king. 
He resolved with the whole strength of his mind to do it. 

He may have had some secret grudge agiinst the king 
besides. The king may have offended his proud humor at 
some time or other, for any thing I know. I think it likely; 
because it is a common thing for kings, princes, and other 
great people, to try the tempers of their favorites rather 
severely. Even the little affair of the crimson cloak must 
have been any thing but a pleasant one to a haughty man. 
Thomas a Becket knew better than any one in England 
what the king expected of him. In all his sumptuous life, 
he had never yet been in a position to disappoint the king. 
He could take up that proud stand now, as head of the 
Church ; and he determined that it should be written in his- 
tory, either that he subdued the king, or that the king sub- 
dued him. 

So, of a sudden, he completely altered the whole manner 
of his life. He turned off all his brilliant followers, ate 
coarse food, drank bitter water, wore next his skin sack- 
cloth covered with dirt and vermin (for it was then thought 
very religious to be very dirty), flogged his back to punish 
himself, lived chiefly in a little cell, washed the feet of thir- 
teen poor people every day, and looked as miserable as he 
.possibly could. If he had put twelve hundred monkeys on 
horseback instead of twelve, and had gone in procession 
with eight thousand wagons instead of eight, he could not 
have half astonished the people so much as by this great 
change. It soon caused him to be more talked about as an 
archbishop than he had been as a chancellor. 

The king was very angry ; and was made still more so, 
when the new archbishop, claiming various estates from the 
nobles as being rightfully church property, required the 
king himself, for the same reason, to give up Rochester 
Castle, and Rochester City too. Not satisfied with this, he. 
declared that no power but himself should appoint a priest 
to any church in the part of England over which he was 
archbishop ; and when a certain gentleman of Kent made 
such an appointment, as he claimed to have the right to do, 
Thomas a B.ecket excommunicated him. 

Excommunication was, next to the interdict I told you 



82 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of at the close of the last chapter, the great weapon of the 
clergy. It consisted in declaring the person who was ex- 
communicated an outcast from the Church and from all re- 
ligious offices; and in cursing him all over, from the top of 
his head to the sole of his foot, whether he was standing up, 
lying down, sitting, kneeling, walking, running, hopping, 
jumping, gaping, coughing, sneezing, or whatever else he 
was doing. This unchristian nonsense would of course have 
made no sort of difference to the person cursed, — who could 
say his prayers at home if he were shut out of church, and 
whom none but God could judge, — hut for the fears and su- 
perstitions of the people, who avoided excommunicated per- 
sons, and made their lives unhappy. So the king said to the 
new archbishop, " Take off this excommunication from this 
gentleman of Kent ; " to which the archbishop replied, " I 
shall do no such thing." 

The quarrel went on. A priest in Worcestershire com- 
mitted a most dreadful murder, that aroused the horror of 
the whole nation. The king demanded to have this 
wretch delivered up, to be tried in the same court and in 
the same way as any other murderer. The archbishop re- 
fused, and kept him in the bishop's prison. The king, hold- 
ing a solemn assembly in Westminster Hall, demanded 
that in future all priests found guilty before their bishops 
of crimes against the law of the land should be considered 
priests no longer, and should be delivered over to the law 
of the land for punishment. The archbishop again re- 
fused. The king required to know whether the clergy 
would obey the ancient customs of the country ? Every 
priest there, but one, said, after Thomas a Becket, " Saving 
my order." This really meant that they would only obey 
those customs when they did not interfere with their own 
claims ; and the king went out of the hall in great wrath. 

Some of the clergy began to be afraid, now, that they 
were going too far. Though Thomas a Becket was other- 
wise as unmoved as Westminster Hall, they prevailed upon 
him, for the sake of their fears, to go to the king at Wood- 
stock, and promise to observe the ancient customs of the 
country, without saying any thing about his order. The 
king received this submission favorably, and summoned a 
great council of the clergy to meet at the Castle of Claren- 
don, by Salisbury. But when the council met^the arch- 
bishop again insisted on the words, "saving my order;" 



HENRY THE SECOND. 83 

and he still insisted, though lords entreated him, and priests 
wept before him and knelt to him, and an adjoining room 
was thrown open, filled with armed soldiers of the king, to 
threaten him. At length he gave way, for that time ; and 
the ancient customs (which included what the king had de- 
manded in vain) were stated in writing, and were signed 
and sealed by the chief of the clergy, and were called the 
Constitutions of Clarendon. 

The quarrel went on, for all that. The archbishop tried 
to see the king. The king would not see him. The arch- 
bishop tried to escape from England. The sailors on the 
coast would launch no boat to take him away. Then 
he again resolved to do his worst in opposition to the king, 
and began openly to set the ancient customs at defiance. 

The king summoned him before a great council at North- 
ampton, where he accused him of high treason, and made 
a claim against him, which was not a just one, for an enor- 
mous sum of money. Thomas a Becket was alone against 
the whole assembly ; and the very bishops advised him to 
resign his office, and abandon his contest with the king. 
His great anxiety and agitation stretched him on a sick-bed 
for two days, but he was still undaunted. He went to the 
adjourned council, carrying a great cross in his right hand, 
and sat down, "holding it erect before him. The king 
angrily retired into an inner room. The whole assembly 
angrily retired, and left him there ; but there he sat. The 
bishops came out again in a body, and renounced him as a 
traitor. He only said, " I hear ! " and sat there still. 
They retired again into an inner room, and his trial pro- 
ceeded without him. By and by, the Earl of Leicester, 
heading the barons, came out to read his sentence. He 
refused to hear it, denied the power of the court, and 
said he would refer his cause to the Pope. As he walked 
out of the hall, with the cross in his hand, some of those 
present picked up rushes, — rushes were strewn upon the 
floors in those days by way of carpet, — and threw them at 
him. He proudly turned his head, and said, that, were he 
not archbishop, he would chastise those cowards with the 
sword he had known how to use in bygone days. He then 
mounted his horse, and rode away, cheered and surrounded 
by the common people, to whom he threw open his house 
that night anjl gave a supper, supping with them himself. 
That same night he secretly departed from the town ; and 



84 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

so, travelling by night and hiding by day, and calling him- 
self " Brother Dearman," got away, not without difficulty, 
to Flanders. 

The struggle still went on. The angry king took pos- 
session of the revenues of the archbishopric, and banished 
all the relations and servants of Thomas a Becket, to the 
number of four hundred. The Pope and the French king 
both protected him, and an abbey was assigned for his res- 
idence. Stimulated by this support, Thomas a Becket, on 
a great festival day, formally proceeded to a great church 
crowded with people, and going up into the pulpit publicly 
cursed and excommunicated all who had supported the Con- 
stitutions of Clarendon, mentioning many English noble- 
men by name, and not distantly hinting at the King of 
England himself. 

When intelligence of this new affront was carried to the 
king in his chamber, his passion was so furious, that he 
tore his clothes, and rolled like a madman on his bed of 
straw and rushes. But he was soon up and doing. He or- 
dered all the ports and coasts of England to be narrowly 
watched, that no letters of interdict might be brought into 
the kingdom ; and sent messengers and bribes to the Pope's 
palace at Rome. Meanwhile, Thomas a Becket, for his 
part, was not idle at Rome, but constantly employed his 
utmost arts in his own behalf. Thus the contest stood, un- 
till there was peace between France and England (which 
had been for some time at war), and until the two children 
of the two kings were married in celebration of it. Then 
the French king brought about a meeting between Henry 
and his old favorite, so long his enemy. 

Even then, though Thomas a Becket knelt before the 
king, he was obstinate and immovable as to those words 
about his order. King Louis of France was weak enough 
in his veneration for Thomas a Becket, and such men ; but 
this was a little too much for him. He said that a Becket 
" wanted to be greater than the saints, and better than St. 
Peter," and rode away from him with the King of Eng- 
land. His poor French Majesty asked a Becket's pardon 
for so doing, however, soon afterwards, and cut a very piti- 
ful figure. 

At last, and after a world of trouble, it came to this. 
There was another meeting on French ground between 
King Henry and Thomas a Becket 5 and it was agreed that 



HENRY THE SECOND. 85 

Thomas a Becket should be Archbishop of Canterbury, ac- 
cording to the customs of former archbishops, and that the 
king should put him in possession of the revenues of that 
post. And now, indeed, you might suppose the struggle at 
an end, and Thomas a Becket at rest. No: not even yet; 
for Thomas a Becket hearing, by some means, that King 
Henry, when he was in dread of his kingdom being placed 
under an interdict, had had his eldest son, Prince Henry, 
secretly crowned, not only persuaded the Pope to suspend 
the Archbishop of York, who had performed that ceremony, 
and to excommunicate the bishops who had assisted at it, 
but sent a messenger of his own into England, in spite of 
all the king's precautions along the coast, who delivered 
the letters of excommunication into the bishop's own 
hands. Thomas a Becket then came over to England him- 
self, after an absence of seven years. He was privately 
warned that it was dangerous to come, and that an ireful 
knight^ named K-anulf de Broc, had threatened that he 
should not live to eat a loaf of bread in England ; but he 
came. 

The common people received him well, and marched 
about with him in a soldierly way, armed with such rustic 
weapons as they could get. He tried to see the young 
prince who had once been his pupil, but was prevented. 
He hoped for some little support among the nobles and 
priests, but found none. He made the most of the peasants 
who attended him, and feasted them, and went from Can- 
terbury to Harrow-on-the-Hill, and from Harrow-on-the- 
Hill back to Canterbury, and on Christmas Day preached 
in the cathedral there, and told the people in his sermon 
that he had come to die among them, and that it was like- 
ly he would be murdered. He had no fear, however, or, 
if he had any, he had much more obstinacy ; for he, then 
and there, excommunicated three of his enemies, of whom 
B-anulf de Broc, the ireful knight, was one. 

As men in general had no fancy for being cursed, in 
their sitting and walking, and gaping and sneezing, and all 
the rest of it, it was very natural in the persons so freely 
excommunicated to complain to the king. It was equally 
natural in the king, who had hoped that this troublesome 
opponent was at last quieted, to fall into a mighty rage 
when he heard of these new affronts ; and, on the Arch- 
bishop of York telling him that he never could hope for 
8 



86 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

rest while Thomas a Becket lived, to cry out hastily hefore 
his court, " Have I no one here who will deliver me from 
this man ? " There were four knights present, who, hear- 
ing the king's words, looked at one another, and went out. 

The names of these knights were Reginald Fitzurse, 
William Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard 
Brito ; three of whom had- been in the train of Thomas a 
Becket in the old days of his splendor. They rode away 
on horseback, in a very secret manner, and on the third 
day after Christmas Day arrived at Saltwood House, not 
far from Canterbury, which belonged to the family of 
Ranulf de Broc. They quietly collected some followers 
here, in case they should need any ; and, proceeding to Can- 
terbury, suddenly appeared (the four knights and twelve 
men) before the archbishop, in his own house, at two 
o'clock in the afternoon. They neither bowed nor spoke, 
but sat down on the floor in silence, staring at the arch- 
bishop. 

Thomas a Becket said, at length, " What do you want ? " 

"We want," said Reginald Fitzurse, "the excommuni- 
cation taken from the bishops, and you to answer for your 
offences to the king." 

Thomas a Becket defiantly replied, that the power of the 
clergy was above the power of king ; that it was not for 
such men as they were to threaten him ; that, if he were 
threatened by all the swords in England, he would never 
yield. 

"Then we will do more than threaten!" said the 
knights. And they went out with the twelve men, and 
put on their armor, and drew their shining swords, and 
came back. 

His servants, in the mean time, had shut up and barred 
the great gate of the palace. At first, the knights tried to 
shatter it with their battle-axes ; but, being shown a win- 
dow by which they could enter, they let the gate alone, and 
climbed in that way. While they were battering at the 
door, the attendants of Thomas a Becket had implored him 
to take refuge in the cathedral ; in which, as a sanctuary or 
sacred place, they thought the knights would dare to do no 
violent deed. He told them, again and again, that he would 
not stir. ' Hearing the distant voices of the monks singing 
the evening service, however, he said it was now his duty to 
attend ; and therefore, and for no other reason, he would go. 



HENRY THE SECOND. 87 

There was a near way between his palace and the cathe- 
dral, by some beautiful old cloisters which you may yet see. 
He went into the cathedral, without any hurry, and having 
the cross carried before him as usual. When he was safely 
there, his servants would have fastened the door ; but he 
said, JSTo : it was the house of God, and not a fortress. 

As he spoke, the shadow of Reginald Fitzurse appeared 
in the cathedral doorway, darkening the little light there 
was outside, on the dark winter evening. This knight said, 
in a strong voice, " Follow me, loyal servants of the king ! " 
The rattle of the armor of the other knights echoed through 
the cathedral, as they came clashing in. 

It was so dark, in the lofty aisles and among the stately 
pillars of the church, and there were so many hiding-places 
in the crypt below and in the narrow passages above, that 
Thomas a Becket might even at that pass have saved him- 
self if he would. But he would not. He told the monks 
resolutely that he would not. And though they all dis- 
persed, and left him there with no other follower than Ed- 
ward Geyme, his faithful cross-bearer, he was as firm then 
as ever he had been in his life. 

The knights came on, through the darkness, making a 
terrible noise with their armed tread upon the stone pave- 
ment of the church. " Where is the traitor ? " they cried 
out. He made no answer. But when they cried, " Where 
is the archbishop ? " he said proudly, " I am here ! " and 
came out of the shade, and stood before them. 

The knights had no desire to kill him, if they could rid 
the king and themselves of him by any other means. They 
told him he must either fly or go with them. He said he 
would do neither ; and he threw William Tracy oif with 
such force, when he took hold of his sleeve, that Tracy 
reeled again. By his reproaches and his steadiness, he so 
incensed them, and exasperated their fierce humor, that 
Reginald Fitzurse, whom he called by an ill name, said, 
" Then die ! " and struck at his head. But the faithful Ed- 
ward Gryme put out his arm, and there received the main 
force of the blow, so that it only made his master bleed. 
Another voice from among the knights again called to' 
Thomas a Becket to fly ; but with his blood running down 
hi^ face, and his hands clasped, and his head bent/ he com- 
mended himself to God, and stood firm. Then they cruelly 
killed him, close to the altar of St. Bennet ; and his body 



88 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

fell upon the pavement, which was dirtied with his blood 
and brains. 

It is an awful thing to think of the murdered mortal, 
who had so showered his curses about, lying, all disfigured, 
in the church, where a few lamps, here and there, were but 
red specks on a pall of darkness ; and to think of the guilty- 
knights riding away on horseback, looking over their shoul- 
ders at the dim cathedral, and remembering what they had 
left inside. 

Part the Second. 

When the king heard how Thomas a Becket had lost his 
life in Canterbury Cathedral, through the ferocity of the 
four knights, he was filled with dismay. Some have sup- 
posed that when the king spoke those hasty words, " Have 
I no one here who will deliver me from this man ? " he 
wished and meant a Becket to be slain. But few things 
are more unlikely ; for, besides that the king was not natu- 
rally cruel (though vejg" passionate), he was wise, and must 
have known full well what any stupid man in his dominions 
must have known, namely, that such a murder would rouse 
the Pope and the whole Church against him. 

He sent respectful messengers to the Pope, to represent 
his innocence (except in having uttered the hasty words) ; 
and he swore solemnly and publicly to his innocence, and 
contrived, in time, to make his peace. As to the four guilty 
knights, who fled into Yorkshire, and never again dared to 
show themselves at court, the Pope excommunicated them; 
and they lived miserably for some time, shunned by all: their 
countrymen. At last they went humbly to Jerusalem, as 
a penance, and there died and were buried. 

It happened fortunately for the pacifying of the Pope, 
that an opportunity arose very soon after the murder of a 
Becket, for the king to declare his power in Ireland ; which 
was an acceptable undertaking to the Pope, as the Irish, 
who had been converted to Christianity by one Patricius 
(otherwise Saint Patrick) long ago, before any pope existed, 
"considered that the Pope had nothing at all to do with them, 
or they with the Pope, and accordingly refused to pay liim 
Peter's Pence, or that tax of a penny a house which I have 
elsewhere mentioned. The king's opportunity arose in this 
way. 



HENRY THE SECOND. 89 

The Irish were, at that time, as barbarous a people as you 
can well imagine. They were continually quarrelling and 
fighting, cutting one another's throats, slicing one another's 
noses, burning one another's houses, carrying away one an- 
other's wives, and committing all sorts of violence. The 
country was divided into five kingdoms, — Desmond, Tho- 
mont>, Connaught, Ulster, and Leinster, — each gov- 
erned by a separate king, of whom one claimed to be the 
chief of the rest. Now, one of these kings, named Der- 
moid MacMurrough (a wild kind of name, spelt in 
more than one wild kind of way), had carried off the wife 
of a friend of his, and concealed her on an island in a bog. 
The friend, resenting this (though it was quite the custom 
of the country), complained to the chief king, and, with the 
chief king's help, drove Dermond MacMurrough out of his 
dominions. Dermond came over to England for revenge ; 
and offered to hold his realm as a vassal of King Henry, 
if King"Henry would help him to regain it. The king con- 
sented to these terms; but only assisted him then with 
what were called letters-patent, authorizing any English 
subjects, who were so disposed, to enter into his service, and 
aid his cause. 

There was at Bristol a certain Earl Kjchard de Clare, 
called Strongbow, of no very good character, needy and des- 
perate, and ready for any thing that offered him a chance of 
improving his fortunes. There were, in South Wales, two 
other broken knights of the same good-for-nothing sort, 
called Robert Fitz-Stephen, and Maurice Fitz-G*r- 
ald. These three, each with a small band of followers, 
took up Dermond's cause ; and it was agreed, that, if it 
proved successful, Strongbow should marry Dermond's 
daughter Eva, and be declared his heir. 

The trained English followers of these knights were so 
superior in alj the discipline of battle to the Irish, that they 
beat them against immense superiority of numbers. In 
one fight, early in the war, they cut off three hundred heads 
and laid them before Mac Murrough; who turned them 
every one up with his hands, rejoicing, and coming, to one 
which was the head of a man whom he had much disliked, 
grasped it by the hair and ears, and tore of the nose and 
lips with his teeth. You may judge from this, what kind 
of a gentleman an Irish king in those times was. The 
captives, all through this war, were horribly treated; the 

8* 



90 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

victorious party making nothing of breaking their limbs, 
and casting them into the sea from the tops of high rocks. 
It was in the midst of the miseries and cruelties attendant 
on the taking of Waterford, where the dead lay piled in the 
streets, and the filthy gutters ran with blood, that Strong- 
bow married Eva. An odious marriage-company those 
mounds of corpses must have made, I think, and one quite 
worthy of the young lady's father. 

He died, after "Waterford and Dublin had been taken, 
and various successes achieved ; and Strongbow became 
king of Leinster. Now came king Henry's opportunity. 
To restrain the growing power of Strongbow, he himself re- 
paired to Dublin, as Strongbow's royal master, and deprived 
him of his kingdom, but confirmed him in the enjoyment 
of great possessions. The king, then holding state in Dub- 
lin, received the homage of nearly all the Irish kings and 
chiefs, and so came home again with a great addition to his 
reputation as Lord of Ireland, and with a new claim on the 
favor of the Pope. And now their reconciliation was 
completed, — more easily and mildly by the Pope than the 
king might have expected, I think. 

At this period of his reign, when his troubles seemed so 
few and his prospects so bright, those domestic miseries 
began which gradually made the king the most unhappy of 
men, reduced his great spirit, wore away his health, and 
broke his heart. 

He had four sons. Henry, now aged eighteen, — his 
secret crowning of whom had given such offence to Thomas 
a Becket ; Richard, aged sixteen ; Geoffrey, fifteen ; 
and John, his favorite, a young boy whom the courtiers 
named Lackland, because he had no inheritance, but to 
whom the king meant to give the Lordship of Ireland. All 
these misguided boys, in their turn, were unnatural sons to 
him, and unnatural brothers to each other. Prince Henry, 
stimulated by the French king, and by his bad mother, 
Queen Eleanor, began the undutiful history. 

First, he demanded that his young wife, Margaret, the 
French king's daughter, should be crowned as well as he. 
His father, the king, consented, and it was done. It was 
no sooner done, than he demanded to have a part of his 
father's dominions during his father's life. This being re- 
fused, he made off from his father in the night, with his bad 
heart full of bitterness, and took refuge at the French king's 



HENRY THE SECOND. 91 

court. Within a day or two, his brothers Richard and 
Geoffrey followed. Their mother tried to join them, es- 
caping in man's clothes ; but she was seized by king 
Henry's men, and immured in prison, where she lay, de- 
servedly, for sixteen years. Every day, however, some 
grasping English nobleman, to whom the king's protection 
of his people from their avarice and oppression had given 
offence, deserted him, and joined the princes. Every day 
he heard some fresh intelligence of the princes levying 
armies against him ; of Prince Henry's wearing a crown 
before his own ambassadors at the French court, and being 
called the Junior King of England ; of all the princes swear- 
ing never to make peace with him, their- father, without the 
consent and approval of the barons of France. But, with 
his fortitude and energy unshaken, King Henry met the 
shock of these disasters with a resolved and cheerful face. 
He called upon all royal fathers who had sons to help him, 
for hts cause was theirs ; he hired, out of his riches, twenty 
thousand men to fight the false French king, who stirred 
his own blood against him ; and he carried on the war with 
such vigor, that Louis soon proposed a conference to treat 
for peace. 

The conference was held beneath an old wide-spreading 
green elm-tree, upon a plain in France. It led to nothing. 
The war recommenced. Prince E-ichard began his fighting 
career by leading an army against his father : but his father 
beat him and his army back ; and thousands of his men 
would have rued the day in which they fought in such a 
wicked cause, had not the king received news of an inva- 
sion of England by the Scots, and promptly come home 
through a great storm to repress it. And whether he really 
began to fear that he suffered these troubles because a Becket 
had been murdered ; or whether he wished to rise in favor 
of the Pope, who had now declared a Becket to be a saint, 
or in the favor of his own people, of whom many believed 
that even a Beeket's senseless tomb could work miracles, I 
don't know : but the king no sooner landed in England, than 
he went straight to Canterbury; and when he came within 
sight of the distant cathedral, he dismounted from his 
horse, took off his shoes, and walked with bare and bleed- 
ing feet to a Beeket's grave. There he lay down on the 
ground, lamenting, in the presence of many people ; and 
by and by he went into the Chapter House, and, removing 



92 A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 

his clothes from his back and shoulders, submitted himself 
to be beaten with knotted cords (not beaten very hard, I dare- 
say, though) by eighty priests, one after another. It chanced, 
that, on the very day when the king made this curious ex- 
hibition of himself, a- complete victory was obtained over 
the Scots ; which very much delighted the priests, who said 
that it was won because of his great example of repentance. 
For the priests in general had found out, since a Becket's 
death, that they admired him of all things, though they 
hated him very cordially when he was alive. 

The Earl of Flanders, who was at the head of the base 
conspiracy of the king's undutiful sons and their foreign 
friends, took the opportunity of the king being thus em- 
ployed at home to lay siege to Rouen, the capital of 
Normandy. But the king, who was extraordinarily quick 
and active in all his movements, was at Rouen too, before 
it was supposed possible that he could have left England; 
and there he so defeated the said Earl of Flanders, that 
the conspirators proposed peace, and his bad sons, Henry 
and Geoffrey, submitted. Richard resisted for six weeks ; 
but, being beaten out of castle after castle, he at last 
submitted too, and his father forgave him. 

To forgive these unworthy princes was only to afford 
them breathing-time for new faithlessness. They were so 
false, disloyal, and dishonorable, that they were no more 
to be trusted than common thieves. In the very next 
year, Prince Henry rebelled again, and was again for- 
given. In eight years more, Prince Richard rebelled 
against his elder brother ; and Prince Geoffrey infamously 
said that the brothers could never agree well together, 
unless they were united against their father. In the very 
next year after their reconciliation by the king, Prince 
Henry again rebelled against his father ; and again sub- 
mitted, swearing to be true, and was again forgiven ; and 
again rebelled with Geoffrey. 

But the end of this perfidious prince was come. He fell 
sick at a French town ; and his conscience terribly re- 
proaching him with his baseness, he sent messengers to 
the king his father, imploring him to come and see him, 
and to forgive him for the last time on his bed of death. 
The generous king, who had a royal and forgiving mind 
towards his children always, would have gone; but this 
prince had been so unnatural, that the noblemen about 



HENRY THE SECOND. 93 

the king suspected treachery, and represented to him that 
he could not safely trust his life with such a traitor, 
though his own eldest son. Therefore the king sent him 
a ring from off his finger as a token of forgiveness ; and 
when the prince had kissed it, with much grief and many 
tears, and had confessed to those around him how bad 
and wicked and undutiful a son he had been, he said to 
the attendant priests, u Oh, tie a rope about my body, and 
draw me out of bed, and lay me down upon a bed of ashes, 
that I may die with prayers to God in a repentant 
manner ! " And so he died, at twenty-seven years old. 

Three years afterwards, Prince Geoffrey, being unhorsed 
at a tournament, had his brains trampled out by a crowd 
of horses passing over him. So there only remained 
Prince Richard, and Prince John, — who had grown to be 
a young man now, and had solemnly sworn to be faithful 
to his father. Richard soon rebelled again, encouraged by 
his frrend the French king, Philip the Second (son of 
Louis, who was dead), and soon submitted, and was again 
forgiven, swearing on the New Testament never to rebel 
again j and, in another year or so, rebelled again, and, in 
the presence of his father, knelt down on his knee before 
the King of France, and did the French king homage, 
and declared, that with his aid he would possess himself, 
by force, of all his father's French dominions. 

And yet this Richard called himself a soldier of our 
Saviour! And yet this Richard wore the cross, which 
the Kings of France and England had both taken, in the 
previous year, at a brotherly meeting underneath the old 
wide-spreading elm-tree on the plain, when they had 
sworn (like him) to devote themselves to a new Crusade, 
for the love and honor of the truth ! 

Sick at heart, wearied out by the falsehood of his sons, 
and almost ready to lie down and die, the unhappy king, 
who had so long stood firm, began to fail. But the Pope, 
to his honor, supported him ; and obliged the French king 
and Richard, though successful in fight, to treat for peace. 
Richard wanted to be crowned king of England, and 
pretended that he wanted to be married (which he really 
did not) to the French king's sister, his promised wife, 
whom King Henry detained in England. King Henry 
wanted, on the other hand, that the French king's sister 
should be married to his favorite son, John, — the only one 



94 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of his sons (he said) who had never rebelled against him. 
At last King Henry, deserted by his nobles one by one, 
distressed, exhausted, broken-hearted, consented to estab- 
lish peace. 

One final heavy sorrow was reserved for him, even yet. 
When they brought him the proposed treaty of peace, in 
writing, as he lay very ill in bed, they brought him also 
the list of the deserters from their allegiance, whom he 
was required to pardon. The first name upon this list 
was John, liis favorite son, in whom he had trusted to the 
last. 

" John ! child of my heart!" exclaimed the king,, 
in a great agony of mind ; " John ! whom I have loved 
the best ; John ! for whojn I have contended through 
these many troubles, — have you betrayed me too ! " 
And then he lay down with a heavy groan, and said, 
" Now let the world go as it will : I care for nothing 
more." 

After a time, he told his attendants to take him to the 
French town of Chinon, — a town he had been fond of 
during many years. But he was fond of no place now: 
it was too true that he could care for nothing more upon 
this earth. He wildly .cursed the hour when he was 
born, and cursed the children whom he left behind him, 
and expired. 

As one hundred years before, the servile followers of 
the court had abandoned the Conqueror in the hour of his 
death, so they now abandoned his descendant. The very 
body was stripped, in the plunder of the royal chamber; 
and it was not easy to find the means of carrying it for 
burial to the abbey-church of Fontevfaud." 

Richard was said in after years, by way of flattery, to 
have the heart of a lion. It would have been far better, I 
think, to have the heart of a man. His heart, whatever 
it was, had cause to beat remorsefully within his breast, 
when he came — as he did — into the solemn abbey, and 
looked on his dead father's uncovered face. His heart, 
whatever it was, had been a black and perjured heart, in 
all its dealings with the deceased king, and more deficient 
in a single touch of tenderness than any wild beast's in the 
forest. 

There is a pretty story told of this reign, called the 
story of Fair Rosamond. It relates how the king doted 



HENRY THE SECOND. *95 

on Fair Rosamond, who was the loveliest girl in all the 
world ; and how he had a beautiful bower built for her in 
a park at Woodstock ; and how it was erected in a laby- 
rinth, and could only be found by a clew of silk. How the 
bad Queen Eleanor, becoming jealous of Fair Rosamond, 
found out the secret of the clew, and one day appeared 
before her, with a dagger and a cup of poison, and left her 
to the choice between those deaths. How Fair Rosamond, 
after shedding many piteous tears, and offering many use- 
less prayers to the cruel queen, took the poison, and fell 
dead in the midst of the beautiful bower, while the uncon- 
scious birds sang gayly all around her. 

Now, there was a fair Rosamond, and she was (I dare- 
say) the loveliest girl in all the world, and the king was 
certainly very fond of her, and the bad Queen Eleanor was 
certainly made jealous. But I am afraid — I say afraid, 
because I like the story so much — that there was no bower, 
no labyrinth, no silken clew, no dagger, no poison. I am 
afraid Fair Rosamond retired to a nunnery near Oxford, 
and died there peaceably ; her sister-nuns hanging a silken 
drapery over her tomb, and often dressing it with flowers, 
in remembrance of the youth and beauty that had enchanted 
the king when he, too, was young, and when his life lay fair 
before him. 

It was dark and ended now ; faded and gone. Henry 
Plantagenet lay quiet in the abbey-church of Fontevraud, 
in the fifty-seventh year of his age, — never to be com- 
pleted, — after governing England well for nearly thirty- 
five years. 



96' A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE FIRST, CALLED THE LION-HEART. 

In the year of our Lord 1189, Richard of the Lion Heart 
succeeded to the throne of King Henry the Second, whose 
paternal heart he had done so much to break. He had been, 
as we have seen, a rebel from his boyhood ; but, the moment 
he became a king against whom others might rebel, he found 
out that rebellion was a great wickedness. In the heat of this 
pious discovery, he punished all the leading people who had 
befriended him against his father. He could scarcely have 
done any thing that would have been a better instance of 
his real nature, or a better warning to fawners and parasites 
not to trust in lion-hearted princes. 

He likewise put his late father's treasurer in chains, and 
locked him up in a dungeon from which he was not set free 
until he had relinquished, not only all the crown treasure, 
but all his own money too. So Richard certainly got the 
lion's share of the wealth of this wretched treasurer, 
whether he had a lion's heart or not. 

He was crowned king of England, with great pomp, at 
Westminster: walking to the cathedral under a silken 
canopy stretched on the tops of four lances, each carried by 
a great lord. On the day of his coronation, a dreadful 
murdering of the Jews took place, which seems to have 
given great delight to numbers of savage persons calling 
themselves Christians. The king had issued a proclama- 
tion forbidding the Jews (who were generally hated, though 
they were the most useful merchants in England) to appear 
at the ceremony ; but as they had assembled in London 
from all parts, bringing presents to show their respect for 
the new sovereign, some of them ventured down to West- 
minster Hall with their gifts, which were very readily ac- 
cepted. It is supposed now that some noisy fellow in the 
crowd, pretending to be a very delicate Christian, set up a 



RICHARD THE FIRST. 97 

howl at this, and struck a Jew who was trying to get in at 
the hall-door with his present. A riot arose : the Jews 
who had got into the hall were driven forth ; and some of 
the rabble cried ont that the new king had commanded the 
unbelieving race to be put to death. Thereupon, the crowd 
rushed through the narrow streets of the city, slaughtering 
all the Jews they met ; and when they could find no more 
out of doors (on account of their having fled to their 
houses, and fastened themselves in), they ran madly about, 
breaking open all the houses where the Jews lived, rushing 
in and stabbing or spearing them, sometimes even flinging 
old people and children out of window into blazing fires 
they had lighted up below. This great cruelty lasted four 
and twenty hours, and only three men were punished for 
it. Even they forfeited their lives, not for murdering and 
robbing the Jews, but for burning the houses of some 
Christians. 

King ""Richard, who was a strong, restless, burly man, 
with one idea always in his head, and that the very trouble- 
some idea of breaking the heads of other men, was mightily 
impatient to go on a crusade to the Holy Land, with a 
great army. % As great armies could not be raised to go, 
even to the Holy Land, without a great deal of money, he 
sold the crown-domains, and even the high offices of state ; 
recklessly appointing noblemen to rule over his English 
subjects, not because they were fit to govern, but because 
they could pay high for the privilege. In this way, and by 
selling pardons at a dear rate, and by varieties of avarice 
and oppression, he scraped together a large treasure. He 
then appointed two bishops to take care of his kingdom 
in his absence, and gave great powers and possessions to 
his brother John, to secure his friendship. John would 
rather have been made Regent of England ; but he was a 
sly man, and friendly to the expedition, saying to himself, 
no doubt, "The more fighting, the more chance of my 
brother being killed ; and when he is killed, then I become 
King John!" 

Before the newly-levied army departed from England, 
the recruits and the general populace distinguished them- 
selves by astonishing cruelties on the unfortunate Jews, 
whom in many large towns, they murdered by hundreds in 
the most horrible manner. 

At York, a large body of Jews took refuge in> the castle, 
9 



98 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

in the absence of its governor, after the wives and children 
of many of them had been slain before their eyes. Pres- 
ently came the governor, and demanded admission. "How- 
can we give it thee, O Governor !" said the Jews upon the 
walls, " when, if we open the gate by so much as the width 
of a foot, the roaring crowd behind thee will press in and 
kill us?" 

Upon this the unjust governor became angry, and told 
the people that he approved of their killing those Jews; 
and a mischievous maniac of a friar, dressed all in white, 
put himself at the head of the assault, and they assaulted 
the castle for three days. 

Then said Jocen, the head Jew (who was a rabbi or 
priest), to the rest, "■ Brethren, there is no hope for us with 
the Christians who are hammering at the gates and walls, 
and who must soon break in. As we and our^ wives and 
children must die, either by Christian hands or by our own, 
let it be by our own. Let us destroy by fire what jewels 
and other treasure we have here, then fire the castle, and 
then perish." 

A few could not resolve to do this, but the greater part 
complied. They made a blading heap of all their valuables, 
and, when those were consumed, set the castle in flames. 
While the flames roared and crackled around them, and, 
shooting up into the sky, turned it blood-red, Jocen cut 
'the throat of his beloved wife and stabbed himself. All 
the others who had wives or children did the like dreadful 
deed. When the populace broke in, they found (except 
the trembling few, cowering in corners, whom they soon 
killed) only heaps of greasy cinders, with here and there 
something like part of the blackened trunk of a burnt tree, 
but which had lately been a human creature, formed by the 
beneficent hand of the Creator, as they were. 

After this bad beginning, Richard and his troops went 
on, in no very good manner, with the holy crusade. It was 
undertaken jointly by the King of England and his old 
friend Philip of France.. They commenced the business 
by reviewing their forces, to the number of a hundred 
thousand men. Afterwards they severally embarked their 
troops for Messina, in Sicily, which was appointed as the 
next place of meeting. 

King Eichard's sister had married the king of this place, 
but he was dead ; and his uncle Tancred had usurped the 



RICHAED THE FIRST. 99 

crown, cast the royal widow into prison, and possessed him- 
self of her estates. Richard fiercely demanded his sister's 
release, the restoration of her lands, and (according to the 
royal custom of the island) that she should have a golden 
chair, a golden table, four and twenty silver cups, and four 
and twenty silver dishes. ' As he was too powerful to he 
successfully resisted, Tancred yielded to his demands ; and 
then the French king grew jealous, and complained that 
the English king wanted to be absolute in the Island 
of Messina and everywhere, else. Richard, however, cared 
little or nothing for this complaint ; and, in consideration 
of a present of twenty thousand pieces of gold, promised 
his pretty little nephew Arthur, then a child of two years 
old, in marriage to Tancred's daughter. We shall hear 
again of pretty little Arthur by and by. 

This Sicilian affair arranged without anybody's brains 
being knocked out (which must have rather disappointed 
him), King Richard took^ his sister away, and also a fair 
lady named Berengaria, with whom he had fallen in love 
in France, and whom his mother, Queen Eleanor (so long 
in prison, you remember, but released by Richard on his 
coming to the throne), had brought out there to be his wife, 
and sailed with them for Cyprus. 

He soon had the pleasure of "fighting the king of the 
Island of Cyprus, for allowing his subjects to pillage some 
of the English troops who were shipwrecked on the shore ; 
and, easily conquering this poor monarch, he seized his only 
daughter, to be a companion to the lady Berengaria, and 
put the king himself into silver fetters. He then sailed 
away again with his mother, sister, wife, and the captive 
princess ; and soon arrived before the town of Acre, which 
the French king with his fleet was besieging from the sea. 
But the French king was in no triumphant condition: for 
his army had been thinned by the swords of the Saracens, 
and wasted by the plague ; and Saladin, the brave sultan 
of the Turks, at the head of* the numerous army, was at 
that time gallantly defending the place from the hills that 
rise above it. 

Wherever the united army of Crusaders went, they 
agreed in few points except in gaming, drinking, and quar- 
relling, in a most unholy manner ; in debauching the people 
among whom they tarried, whether they were friends or 
foes ; and in carrying disturbance and ruin into quiet places. 



100 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The French king was jealous of the English king, and 
the English king was jealous of the French king, and the 
disorderly and violent soldiers of the two nations were 
jealous of one another : consequently the two kings could 
not at first agree, even upon a joint assault on Acre ; but 
when they did make up their quarrel for that purpose, the 
Saracens promised to yield the town, to give up the Chris- 
tians the wood of the holy cross, to set at liberty all their 
Christian captives, and to pay two hundred thousand pieces 
of gold. All this was to be done within forty days ; but 
not being done, King Eichard ordered some three thousand 
Saracen prisoners to be brought out in the front of his 
camp, and there, in full view of their own countrymen, to 
be butchered. 

The French king had no part in this crime ; for he was 
by that time travelling homeward with the greater part of 
his men, being offended by the overbearing conduct of the 
English king, being anxious to look after his own domin- 
ions, and being ill, besides, from the unwholesome air of 
that hot and sandy country. King Eichard carried on the 
war without him, and remained in the East, meeting with 
a variety of adventures, nearly a year and a half. Every 
night when his army was on the march, and came to a halt, 
the heralds cried out three times, to remind all the soldiers 
of the cause in which they were engaged, " Save the holy 
sepulchre ! " and then all the soldiers knelt and said 
" Amen ! " Marching or encamping, the army had contin- 
ually to strive with the hot air of the glaring desert, or with 
the Saracen soldiers animated and directed by the brave 
Saladin, or with both together. Sickness and death, battle 
and wounds, were always among them ; but through every 
difficulty King Eichard fought like a giant, and worked 
like a common laborer. Long and long after he was quiet 
in his grave, his terrible battle-axe, with twenty English 
pounds of English steel in its mighty head, was a legend 
among the Saracens ;• and whSn all the Saracen and Chris- 
tian hosts had been dust for many a year, if a Saracen 
horse started at any object by the wayside, his rider would 
exclaim, "What dost thou fear, fool? Dost thou think 
King Eichard is behind it ? " 

No one admired this king's renown for bravery more than 
Saladin himself, who was a generous and gallant enemy. 
When Eichard lay ill of a fever, Saladin sent him fresh 



RICHARD THE FIRST. 101 

fruits from Damascus, and snow from the mountain-tops. 
Courtly messages and compliments were frequently ex- 
changed between them; and then King Richard would 
mount his horse, and kill as many Saracens as he could, and 
Saladin would mount his, and kill as many Christians as he 
could . In this way King Richard fought to his heart's con- 
tent at Arsoof and at Jaffa ; and finding himself with nothing 
exciting to do at Ascalon, except to rebuild, for his own de- 
fence, some fortifications there which the Saracens had de- 
stroyed, he kicked his ally, the Duke of Austria, for being 
too proud to wo»k at them. 

The army at last came within sight of the holy city of 
Jerusalem, but being then a mere nest of jealousy, and 
quarrelling and fighting, soon retired, and agreed with the 
Saracens upon a truce for three years, three months, three 
days, and three hours. Then the English Christians, pro- 
tected by^the noble Saladin from Saracen revenge, visited 
our Saviour's tomb ; and then King Richard embarked 
with a small force at Acre to return home. 

But he was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea, and was 
fain to pass through Germany under an assumed name. 
Now, there were many people in Germany who had served 
in the Holy Land under that proud Duke of Austria who 
had been kicked ; and some of them, easily recognizing a 
man so remarkable as King Richard, carried their intelli- 
gence to the kicked duke, who straightway took him pris- 
oner at a little inn near Vienna. 

The duke's master, the Emperor of Germany, and the 
King of France, were equally delighted to have so trouble- 
some a monarch in safe-keeping. Friendships which are 
founded on a partnership in doing wrong are never true ; 
and the King of France was now quite as heartily King 
Richard's foe as he had ever been his friend in his un- 
natural conduct to his father. He monstrously pretended 
that King Richard had designed to poison him in the East ; 
he charged him with having murdered there a man whom 
he had in truth befriended ; he bribed the Emperor of Ger- 
many to keep him close prisoner ; and finally, through the 
plotting of these two princes, Richard was brought before 
the German legislature, charged with the foregoing crimes, 
and many others. But he defended himself so well, that 
many of the assembly were moved to tears by his eloquence 
and earnestness. It was decided that he should be treated, 



102 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

during the rest of his captivity, in a manner more becoming 
his dignity than he had been, and that he should be set free 
on the payment of a heavy ransom. This ransom the En- 
glish people willingly raised. When Queen Eleanor took 
it over to Germany, it was at first evaded and refused. But 
she appealed to the honor of all the princes of the German 
Empire in behalf of her son, and appealed so well that it 
was accepted, and the king released. Thereupon the King 
of France wrote to Prince John, "Take care of thyself: 
the Devil is unchained ! " 

Prince John had reason to fear his brother ; for he had 
been a traitor to him in his captivity. He had secretly 
joined the French king, had vowed to the English nobles 
and people that his brother was dead, and had vainly tried 
to seize the crown. He was now in France, at a place 
called Evreux. Being the meanest and basest of men, he 
contrived a mean and base expedient for making himself 
acceptable to his brother. He invited the French officers 
of the garrison in that town to dinner, murdered them all, 
and then took the fortress. With this recommendation 
to the good- will of a lion-hearted monarch, he hastened to 
King Eichard, fell on his knees before him, and obtained 
the intercession of Queen Eleanor. " I forgive him," said 
the king ; " and I hope I may forget the injury he has done 
me, as easily as I know he will forget my pardon." 

While King Eichard was in Sicily, there had been 
trouble in his dominions at home ; one of the bishops whom 
he had left in charge thereof arresting the other, and mak- 
ing, in his pride and ambition, as great a show as if he 
were king himself. But the king hearing of it at Messina, 
and appointing a new regency, this Longchamp (for that 
was his name) had fled to France in a woman's dress, and 
had there been encouraged and supported by the French 
king. With all these causes of offence against Philip 
in his mind, King Eichard had no sooner been welcomed 
home by his enthusiastic subjects with great display and 
splendor, and had no sooner been crowned afresh at Win- 
chester, than he resolved to show the French king that the 
Devil was unchained indeed, and made war against him 
with great fury. 

There was fresh trouble at home about this time, arising 
out of the discontents of the poor people, who complained 
that they were far more heavily taxed than the rich, and 



RICHARD THE FIRST. 103 

who found a spirited champion in William Fitz-Osbert, 
called Longbeard. He became the leader of a secret 
society, comprising fifty thousand men ; he was seized by 
surprise ; he stabbed the citizen who first laid hands upon 
him, and retreated, bravely fighting, to a church, which he 
maintained four days, until he was dislodged by fire, and 
run through the body as he came out. He was not killed, 
though ; for he was dragged, half dead, at the tail of a 
horse to Smithfield, and there hanged. Death was long a 
favorite remedy for silencing the people's advocates ; but, 
as we go on with this history, I fancy we shall find them 
•difficult to make an end of, for all that. 

The French war, delayed occasionally by a truce, was 
still in progress when a certain lord named Vidomar, 
Viscount of Limoges, chanced to find in his ground a 
treasure of ancient coins. As the king's vassal, he sent 
the king half of it ; but the king claimed the whole. The 
lord refused to yield the whole. The king besieged the lord 
in his castle, swore that he would take the castle by storm, 
and hang every man of its defenders on the battlements. 

There was a strange old song in that part of the country, 
to the effect, that in Limoges an arrow would be made by 
which King Richard would die. It may be that Bertrand 
de Gourdon, a young man who was one of the defenders 
of the castle, had often sung it, or heard it sung of a winter 
night, and remembered it when he saw, from his post upon 
the ramparts, the king, attended only by his chief officer, 
riding below the walls, surveying the place. He drew an 
arrow to the head, took steady aim, said between his teeth, 
" Now, I pray God speed thee well, arrow ! " discharged it, 
and struck the king in the left shoulder. 

Although the wound was not at first considered danger- 
ous, it was severe enough to cause the king to retire to his 
tent, and direct the assault to be made without him. The 
castle was taken; and every man of its defenders was 
hanged, as the king had sworn all should be, except Bertrand 
de Gourdon, who was reserved until the royal pleasure re- 
specting him should be known. 

By that time unskilful treatment had made the wound 
mortal, and the king knew that he was dying. He directed 
Bertrand to be brought into his tent. The young man was 
brought there heavily chained. King Richard looked at 
him steadily. He looked as steadily at the king. 



104 A CHILD'S HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. 

" Knave ! " said King Richard, " what have I done to 
thee, that thou shouldst take my life ? " 

"What hast thou done to me?" replied the young man. 
" With thine own hands thou hast killed my father and my 
two brothers. Myself thou wouldst have hanged. Let me 
die, now, by any torture that thou wilt. My comfort is, 
that no torture can save thee. Thou, too, must die ; and, 
through me, the world is quit of thee." 

Again the king looked at the young man steadily. 
Again the young man looked steadily at him. Perhaps 
some remembrance of his generous enemy Saladin, who was 
not a Christian, came into the mind of the dying king. 

" Youth," he said, " I forgive thee. Go unhurt ! " 

Then, turning to the chief officer who had been riding in 
his company when he received the wound, King Richard 
said, — 

" Take off his chains, give him a hundred shillings, and 
let him depart. " 

He sunk down on his couch, and a dark mist seemed in 
his weakened eyes to fill the tent wherein he had so often 
rested, and he died. His age was forty-two : he had reigned 
ten years. His last command was not obeyed ; for the 
chief officer flayed Bertrand de Gourdon alive, and hanged 
him. 

There is an old tune yet known — a sorrowful air will 
sometimes outlive many generations of strong men, and 
even last longer than battle-axes with twenty pounds of 
steel in the head — by which this king is said to have been 
discovered in his captivity. Blondel, a favorite minstrel 
of King Richard, as the story relates, faithfully seeking his 
royal master, went singing it outside the gloomy walls of 
many foreign fortresses and prisons, until, at last, he heard 
it echoed from within a dungeon, and knew the voice, and 
cried out in ecstasy, " Richard ! my king ! " You may 
believe it, if you like : it would be easy to believe worse 
things. Richard was himself a minstrel and poet. If he 
had not been a prince too, he might have been a better man 
perhaps, and might have gone out of the world with less 
bloodshed and waste of life to answer for. 



JOHN. 106 



CHAPTER XIV. 

ENGLAND UNDER KING JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND. 

At two and thirty years of age, John became King of 
England. His pretty little nephew* Arthur had the best 
claim to the throne; but John seized the treasure, and 
made fine promises to the nobility, and got himself crowned 
at Westminster within a few. weeks after his brother Rich- 
ard's death. I doubt whether the crown could possibly 
have been put upon the head of a meaner coward, or a 
more detestable villain, if England had been searched from 
end to end to find him out. 

The French king, Philip, refused to acknowledge the 
right of John to his new dignity, and declared in favor of 
Arthur. You must not suppose that he had any generosity 
of feeling for the fatherless boy: it merely suited his am- 
bitious schemes to oppose the King of England. So John 
and the French .king went to war about Arthur. 

He was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve years 
old. He was not born when his father, Geoffrey, had his 
brains trampled out at the tournament ; and, besides the 
misfortune of never having known a father's guidance and 
protection, he had the additional misfortune to have a 
foolish mother (Constance byname), lately married to 
her third husband. She took Arthur, upon John's acces- 
sion, to the French king, who pretended to be very much 
his friend, and who made him a knight, and promised him 
his daughter in marriage; but 'who cared so little about 
him in reality, that, finding it his interest to make peace 
with King John for a time, he did so without the least con- 
sideration for the poor little prince) and heartlessly sacri- 
ficed all his interests. 

Young Arthur, for two years afterwards, lived quietly ; 
and in the course of that time his mother died. But the 
French king then finding it his interest to quarrel with 



100 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

King John again, again made Arthur his pretence, and in- 
vited the orphan boy to court. " You know your rights, 
Prince," said the French king, " and you would like to be 
a king. Is it not so ? " " Truly," said Prince Arthur, " I 
should greatly like to be a king ! " — " Then," said Philip, 
"you shall have two hundred gentlemen who are knights 
of mine, and with them you shall go to win back the prov- 
inces belonging to you, of which your uncle, the usurping 
King of England, has taken possession. I myself, mean- 
while, will head a force against him in Normandy." Poor 
Arthur was so flattered, and so grateful, that he signed a 
treaty with the crafty French king, agreeing to consider 
him his superior lord, and that the French king should keep 
for himself whatever he could take from King John. 

-Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and King Philip 
was so perfidious, that Arthur, between the two, might as 
well have been a lamb between a fox and a wolf. But, 
being so young, he was ardent and flushed with hope ; and 
when the people of Brittany (which was his inheritance) 
sent him five hundred more knights and -five thousand foot- 
soldiers, he believed his fortune was made. The people of 
Brittany had been fond of him from his birth, and had re- 
quested that he might be called Arthur, in remembrance 
of that dimly-famous English Arthur of whom I told you 
early in this book, whom they believed to have been the 
brave friend and companion of an old king of their own. 
They had tales among them about a prophet called Merlin 
(of the same old time), who had foretold that their own 
king should be restored to them after hundreds of years : 
and they believed that the prophecy would be fulfilled in 
Arthur ; that the time would come when he would rule 
them with a crown of Brittany upon his head, and when 
neither King of France nor King of England would have 
any power over them. When Arthur found himself riding 
in a glittering suit of armor, on a richly caparisoned horse, 
at the head of his train of knights and soldiers, he began 
to believe this too, and to consider old Merlin a very supe- 
rior prophet. 

He did not know — how could he, being so innocent and 
inexperienced? — that his little army was a mere nothing 
against the power of the King of England. The French 
king knew it ; but the poor boy's fate was little to him, so 
that the King of England was worried and distressed. 



JOHN. 107 

Therefore, King Philip went his way into Normandy ; and 
Prince Arthur went his way towards Mirebeau, a French 
town near Poictiers, both very well pleased. 

Prince Arthur went to attack the town of Mirebeau, be- 
cause his grandmother Eleanor, who has so often made her 
appearance in this history (and who had always been his 
mother's enemy), was living there, and because his knights 
said, " Prince, if you can take her prisoner, you will be 
able to bring the king your uncle to terms ! " But she was 
not to be easily taken. She was old enough by this time, 
— eighty ; but she was 4 as full of stratagem as she was 
full of years and wickedness. Receiving intelligence of 
young Arthur's approach, she shut herself up in a high 
tower, and encouraged her soldiers to defend it like men. 
Prince Arthur with his little army besieged the high tower. 
King John, hearing how matters stood, came up to the 
rescue with his army. So here was a strange family party : 
the boy-prince besieging his grandmother, and his uncle 
besieging him ! 

This position of affairs did not last long. One summer 
night King John, by treachery, got his men into the town, 
surprised Prince Arthur's force, took two hundred of his 
knights, and seized the prince himself in his bed. The 
knights were put in heavy irons, and driven away in open 
carts drawn by bullocks, to various dungeons, where they 
were most inhumanly treated, and where some of them 
were starved to death. Prince Arthur was sent to the 
Castle of Falaise. 

One day while he was in prison at that castle, mournfully 
thinking it strange that one so young should be in so much 
■trouble, and looking out of the small window in the deep, 
dark wall, at the summer sky and the birds, the door was 
softly opened, and he saw his uncle, the king, standing in 
the shadow of the archway, looking very grim. 

" Arthur," said the king, with his wicked eyes more on 
the stone floor than on his nephew, " will you not trust to 
the gentleness, the friendship, and the truthfulness of your 
loving uncle ? n 

11 1 will tell my loving uncle that," replied the boy, rt when 
he does me right. Let him restore to me my kingdom of 
England, and then come to me and ask the question." 

The king looked at him and went out. " Keep that boy 
close prisoner," said he to the warden of the castle. 



108 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Then the king took secret counsel with the worst of his 
nobles how the prince was to be got rid of. Some said, 
"Put out his eyes and keep him in prison, as Robert of 
Normandy was kept.' 7 Others said, " Have him stabbed." 
Others, " Have him hanged." Others, " Have him pois- 
oned." 

King John feeling that in any case, whatever was done 
afterwards, it would be a satisfaction to his mind to have 
those handsome eyes, burnt out that had looked at him so 
proudly while his own royal eyes were blinking at the stone 
floor, sent certain ruffians to Falaise to blind the boy with 
red-hot irons. But Arthur so pathetically entreated them, 
and shed such piteous tears, and so appealed to Hubert 
de Bourg (or Burgh), the warden of the castle, who had 
a love for him, and was an honorable, tender man, that 
Hubert could not bear it. To his eternal honor he pre- 
vented the torture from being performed, and, at his own 
risk, sent the savages away. 

The chafed and disappointed king bethought himself of 
the stabbing suggestion next, and, with his shuffling man- 
ner and his cruel face, proposed it to one William de Bray. 
"lama gentleman, and not an executioner," said William 
de Bray, and left the presence with disdain. 

But it was not difficult for a king to hire a murderer in 
those days. King John found one for his money, and sent 
him down to the Castle of Falaise. " On what errand dost 
thou come ? " said Hubert to this fellow. " To despatch 
young Arthur," he returned. " Go back to him who sent 
thee," answered Hubert, " and say that I will do it." 

King John, very well knowing that Hubert would never 
do it, but that he courageously sent this reply to save the- 
prince or gain time, despatched messengers to convey the 
young prisoner to the Castle of Rouen. 

Arthur was soon forced from the good Hubert, of whom 
he had never stood in greater need than then, carried away 
by night, and lodged in his new prison j where, through 
his grated window, he could hear the deep waters of the 
River Seine rippling against the stone wall below. 

One dark night, as he lay sleeping, dreaming perhaps of 
rescue by those unfortunate gentlemen who were obscurely 
suffering and dying in his cause, he was roused, and bid- 
den by his jailer to come down the staircase to the foot of 
the tower. He hurriedly dressed himself and obeyed. 







AUTHIR AND HUBERT. 



JOHN 109 

When they came to the bottom of the winding stairs, and 
the night air from the river blew upon their faces, the jailer 
trod upon his torch, and put it out. Then Arthur, in the 
darkness, was hurriedly drawn into a solitary boat. And 
in that boat he found his uncle and one other man. 

He knelt to them, and prayed them not to murder him. 
Deaf to his entreaties, they stabbed him, and sunk his 
body in the river with heavy stones. When the spring 
morning broke the tower-door was closed, the boat was 
gone, the river sparkled on its way, and never more was 
any trace of the poor boy beheld by mortal eyes. 

The news of this atrocious murder being spread in Eng- 
land awakened a hatred of the king (already odious for his 
many vices, and for his having stolen away and married a 
noble lady while his own wife was living) that never slept 
again through his whole reign. In Brittany the indigna- 
tion was intense. Arthur's own sister Eleanor, was in 
the power of John, and shut up in a convent at Bristol ; 
but his half-sister Alice was in Brittany. The people 
chose her, and the murdered prince's father-in-law, the last 
husband of Constance, to represent them, and carried their 
fiery complaints to King Philip. King Philip summoned 
King John (as the holder of territory in France) to come 
before him and defend himself. King John refusing to 
appear, King Philip declared him false, perjured, and guilty, 
and again made war. In a little time, by conquering the 
greater part of his French territory, King Philip deprived 
him of one-third of his dominions. And through all the 
fighting that took place, King John was always found either 
to be eating and drinking like a gluttonous fool when the 
danger was at a distance, or to be running away like a 
beaten cur when it was near. 

You might suppose that when he was losing his domin- 
ions at this rate, and when his own nobles cared so little 
for him or his cause that they plainly refused to follow his 
banner out of England, he had enemies enough. But he 
made another enemy of the Pope, which he did in this 
way. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury dying, the junior monks 
of that place, wishing to get the start of the senior 
monks in the appointment of hi» successor, met together at 
midnight, secretly elected a certain Reginald, and sent 
him off to Rome to get the Pope's approval. The senior 
10 



110 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

monks and the king soon finding this out, and being very- 
angry about it, the junior monks gave way ; and all the 
monks together elected the Bishop of Norwich, who was 
the king's favorite. The Pope, hearing the whole story, 
declared that neither election would do for him, and that 
he elected Stephen Langton. The monks submitting to 
the Pope, the king turned them all out bodily, and banished 
them as traitors. The Pope sent three bishops to the king 
to threaten him with an interdict. The king told the 
bishops, that, if any interdict were laid upon his kingdom, 
he would tear out the eyes and cut off the noses of all the 
monks he could lay hold of, and send them over to Rome 
in that undecorated state as a present for their master. 
The bishops, nevertheless, soon published the interdict and 
fled. 

After it had lasted a year, the Pope proceeded to his next 
step, which was excommunication. King John was de- 
clared excommunicated, with all the usual ceremonies. The 
king was so incensed at this, and was made so desperate by 
the disaffection of his barons and the hatred of his people, 
that it is said he even privately sent ambassadors to the Turks 
in Spain, offering to renounce his religion, and hold his 
kingdom of them, if they would help him. It is related 
that the ambassadors were admitted to the presence of the 
Turkish emir through long lines of Moorish guards, and 
that they found the emir with his eyes seriously fixed on 
the pages of a large book, from which he never once looked 
up ; that they gave him a letter from the king, containing 
his proposals, and were gravely dismissed ; that presently 
the emir sent for one of them, and conjured him, by his 
faith in his religion, to say what kind of man the King of 
England truly was ; that the ambassador, thus pressed, 
replied, that the King of England was a false tyrant, against 
whom his own subjects would soon rise ; and that this was 
quite enough for the emir. 

Money being, in his position, the next best thing to men, 
King John spared no means of getting it. He set on foot 
another oppressing and torturing of the unhappy Jews 
(which was quite in his way), and invented a new punish- 
ment for one wealthy Jew of Bristol. Until such time as 
that Jew should produce a -certain large sum of money, the 
king sentenced him to be imprisoned, and every day to 
have one tooth violently wrenched out of his head ; begin- 



JOHN. Ill 

ning with the double teeth. For seven days, the oppressed 
man bore the daily pain and lost the .daily tooth ; but on 
the eighth he paid the money. With the treasure raised 
in such ways, the king made an expedition into Ireland, 
where some English nobles had revolted. It was one of the 
very few places from which he did not run away ; because 
no resistance was shown. He made another expedition 
into Wales, whence he did run away in the end, but 
not before he had got from the Welsh people, as hostages, 
twenty-seven young men of the best families ; every one of 
whom he caused to be slain in the following year. 

To interdict and excommunication, the Pope now added 
his last sentence, deposition. He proclaimed John no 
longer king, absolved all his subjects from their allegiance, 
and sent Stephen Langton and others to the King of France 
to tell him, that, if he would -invade England, he should be 
forgives all his sins ; at least, should be forgiven them by 
the Pope, if that would do. 

As there was nothing that King Philip desired more than 
to invade England, he collected a great army at Rouen, and 
a fleet of seventeen hundred ships to bring them over. 
But the English people, however bitterly they hated the 
king, were not a people to suffer invasion quietly. They 
flocked to Dover, where the English standard was, in such 
great numbers, to enroll themselves as defenders of their 
native land, that there were not provisions for them ; and 
the king could only select and retain sixty thousand. But 
at this crisis the Pope, who had his own reasons for object- 
ing to either King John or King Philip being too powerful, 
interfered. He intrusted a legate, whose name was Pan- 
dolf, with the easy task of frightening King John. He 
sent him to the English camp, from France, to terrify him 
with exaggerations of King Philip's power, and his own 
weakness in the discontent of the English barons and peo- 
ple. Pandolf discharged his commission so well, that King 
John, in a wretched panic, consented to acknowledge 
Stephen Langton; to resign his kingdom " to God, Saint 
Peter, and Saint Paul," which meant the Pope ; and to 
hold it ever afterwards by the Pope's leave, on payment 
of an annual sum of money. To this shameful contract he 
publicly bound himself in the church of the Knights Tem- 
plars at Dover ; where he laid at the legate's feet a part of 
the tribute, which the legate haughtily trampled upon. 



112 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

But they do say that this was merely a genteel flourish, 
and that he was afterwards seen to pick it up and pocket it. 

There was an unfortunate prophet, of the name of Peter, 
who had greatly increased King John's terrors by predict- 
ing that he would be unknighted (which the king supposed 
to signify that he would die) before the Feast of the Ascen- 
sion should be past. That was the day after this humilia- 
tion. When the next morning came, and the king, who 
had been trembling all night, found himself alive and safe, 
he ordered the prophet, and his son too, to be dragged 
through the streets at the tails of horses, and then hanged, 
for having frightened him. 

As King John had now submitted, the Pope, to King 
Philip's great astonishment, took him under his protection, 
and informed King Philip that he found he could not give 
him leave to invade England. The angry Philip resolved 
to do it without his leave: but he gained nothing, and lost 
much ; for the English, commanded by the Earl of Salis- 
bury, went over in five hundred ships, to the French coast, 
before the French fleet had sailed away from it, and utterly 
defeated the whole. 

The Pope then took off his three sentences, one after 
another, and empowered Stephen Langton publicly to re- 
ceive King John into the favor of the Church again, and to 
ask him to dinner. The king, who hated Langton with all 
his might and main, — and with reason too, for he was a 
great and good man, with whom such a king could have 
no sympathy, — pretended to cry and be very grateful. 
There was a little difficulty about settling how much the 
king should pay as a recompense to the clergy for the losses 
he had caused them : but the end of it was, that the su- 
perior clergy got a good deal, and the inferior clergy got 
little or nothing ; which has also happened since King 
John's time, I believe. 

When all these matters were arranged, the king in his 
triumph became more fierce and false and insolent to all 
around him than he had ever been. An alliance of sove- 
reigns against King Philip gave him an opportunity of 
landing an army in France, with which he even took a 
town ! but, on the French king's gaining a great victory, 
he ran away, of course, and made a truce for five years. «*■ 

And now the time approached when he was to be still 
further humbled, and made to feel, if he could feel any 



JOHN. 113 

thing, what a wretched creature he was. Of all men in 
the world, Stephen Langton seemed raised up by Heaven to 
oppose and subdue him. When he ruthlessly burnt and 
destroyed the property of his own subjects, because their 
lords, the barons, would not serve him abroad, Stephen 
Langton fearlessly reproved and threatened him. When 
he swore to restore the laws of King Edward, or the laws of 
King Henry the First, Stephen Langton knew his falsehood, 
and pursued him through all. his evasions. When the barons 
met at the abbey of Saint Edmund's-Bury, to consider their 
wrongs and the king's oppressions, Stephen Langton roused 
them by his fervid words to demand a solemn charter of 
rights and liberties from their perjured master, and to swear, 
one by one, on the high altar, that they would have it, or 
would wage war against him to the death. When the king 
hid himself in London from the barons, and was at last 
obliged to receive them, they told him roundly they would 
not beliefe him unless Stephen Langton became a surety 
that he wculd keep his word. When he took the cross to 
invest himself with some interest, and belong to something 
that was received with favor, Stephen Langton was still 
immovable. When he appealed to the Pope, and the Pope 
wrote to Stephen Langton in behalf of. his new favorite, 
Stephen Langton was deaf, even to the Pope himself, -and 
saw before him nothing but the welfare of England and the 
crimes of the English king. -/_ 

At Easter-time, the barons assembled at Stamford, in 
Lincolnshire, in proud array, and marching near to Oxford, 
where the king was, delivered into the hands of Stephen 
Langton and two others a list of grievances. " And these," 
they said, "he must redress, or we will do it for ourselves! " 
When Stephen Langton told the king as much, and read 
the list to him, he went half-mad with rage. But that did 
him no more good than his afterwards trying to pacify the 
barons with lies. They called themselves and their follow- 
ers, " The army of God and the Holy Church." Marching 
through the country, with the people thronging to them 
everywhere (except at Northampton, where they faileof in 
an attack upon the castle), they at last triumphantly set up 
their banner in London itself, whither the whole land, tired 
of the tyrant, seemed to flock to join them. Seven knights 
alone, of all the knights in England, remained with the 
king ; who, reduced to this strait, at last sent the Earl of 
10* 



114 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Pembroke to the barons to say that he approved of every- 
thing, and would meet them to sign their charter when 
they would. " Then," said the barons, " let the day be the 
15th of June, and the place Runny-Mead." 

On Monday, the 15th of June, 1214, the king came from 
"Windsor Castle, and the barons came from the town of 
Staines, and they met on Runny-Mead, which is still a 
pleasant meadow by the Thames, where rushes grow in the 
clear water of the winding river, and its banks are green 
with grass and trees. On the side of the barons, came the 
general of their army, Robert Eitz-W alter, and a great 
concourse of the nobility of England. With the king came, 
in all, some four and twenty persons of any note, most of 
whom despised him, and were merely his advisers in form. 
On that great day, and in that great company, the king 
signed Magna Charta, — the great charter of England, — 
by which he pledged himself to maintain the Church in its 
rights ; to relieve the barons of oppressive obligations as 
vassals of the crown (of which the barons, in their turn, 
pledged themselves to relieve their vassals, the people) j to 
respect the liberties of London and all other cities and 
boroughs ; to protect foreign merchants who came to Eng- 
land ; to imprison no man without a fair trial ; and to sell, 
delay, or deny justice to none. As the barons knew his 
falsehood well, they further required, as their securities, that 
he should send out of his kingdom all his foreign troops ; 
that for two months they should hold possession of the city 
of London, and Stephen Langton of the tower ; and that 
five and twenty of their body, chosen by themselves, should 
be a lawful committee to watch the keeping of the charter, 
and to make war upon him if he broke it. 

All this he was obliged to yield. He signed the charter 
with a smile, and, if he could have looked agreeable, would 
have done so, as he departed from the splendid assembly. 
When he got home to Windsor Castle, he was quite a mad- 
man in his helpless fury. And he broke the charter imme- 
diately afterwards. 

He sent abroad for foreign soldiers, and sent to the Pope 
for help, and plotted to take London by surprise, while the 
barons should be holding a great tournament at Stamford, 
which they had agreed to hold there as a celebration of the 
charter. The barons, however, found him out, and put it off. 
Then, when the barons desired to see him, and tax him with 



JOHN. 115 

his treachery, he made numbers of appointments with them, 
and kept none, and shifted from place to place, and was 
constantly sneaking and skulking about. At last he ap- 
peared at Dover, to join his foreign soldiers, of whom num- 
bers came into his pay ; and with them he besieged and 
took Rochester Castle, which was occupied by knights and 
soldiers of the barons. He would have hanged them, every 
one ; but the leader of the foreign soldiers, fearful of what 
the English people might afterwards do to him, interfered 
to save the knights : therefore the king was fain to satisfy 
his vengeance with the death of all the common men. 
Then he sent the Earl of Salisbury, with one portion of 
his army, to ravage the eastern part of his own dominions, 
while he carried fire and slaughter into the northern part ; 
torturing, plundering, killing, and inflicting every possible 
cruelty upon the people ; and every morning setting a 
worthy, example to his men by setting fire, with his own 
monster-hands, to the house where he had slept last night. 
Nor was this all ; for the Pope, coming to the aid of his 
precious friend, laid the kingdom under an interdict again, 
because the people took part with the barons. It did not 
much matter ; for the people had grown so used to it now 
that they had began to think nothing about it. It occurred 
to them, — * perhaps to Stephen Langton too, — that they 
could keep their churches open, and ring their bells, with- 
out the Pope's permission as well as with it. So they tried 
the experiment, and found that it succeeded perfectly. 

It being now impossible to bear the country, as a wilder- 
ness of cruelty, or longer to hold any terms with such a 
forsworn outlaw of a king, the barons sent to Louis, son 
of the French monarch, to offer him the English crown. 
Caring as little for the Pope's excommunication of him if 
he accepted the offer, as it is possible his father may have 
cared for the Pope's forgiveness of his sins, he landed at 
Sandwich (King John immediately running away from 
Dover, where he happened to be), and went on to London. 
The Scottish king, with whom many of the Northern 
English lords had taken refuge, numbers of the foreign 
soldiers, numbers of the barons, and numbers of the people 
went over to him every day; King John the while con- 
tinually running away in all directions. The career of 
Louis was checked, however, by the suspicions of the barons, 
founded on the dying declaration of a French lord, that 



116 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

when the kingdom was conquered he was sworn to banish 
them as traitors, and to give their estates to some of his 
own nobles. Bather than suffer this, some of the barons 
hesitated : others even went over to King John. 

It seemed to be the turning-point of King John's fortunes ; 
for in his savage and murderous course he had now taken 
some towns and met with some successes. But, happily 
for England and humanity, his death was near. Crossing 
a dangerous quicksand, called the wash, not very far from 
Wisbeach, the tide came up, and nearly drowned his army. 
He and his soldiers escaped; but, looking back from the 
shore when he was safe, he saw the roaring water sweep 
down in torrents, overturn the wagons, horses, and men 
that carried his treasure, and ingulf them in a raging 
whirlpool from which nothing could be delivered. 

Cursing and swearing, and gnawing his fingers, he went 
on to Swinestead Abbey, where the monks set before him 
quantities of pears and peaches and new cider, — some say 
poison too, but there is very little reason to suppose so, — 
of which he ate and drank in an immoderate and beastly 
way. All night he lay ill of a burning fever, and haunted 
with horrible fears. Next day they put him in a horse- 
litter, and carried him to Sleaford Castle, where he passed 
another night of pain and horror. Next day tkey carried 
him, with greater difficulty than on the day before, to the 
Castle of Newark upon Trent ; and there, on the 18th of 
October, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the seven- 
teenth of his vile reign, was an end of this miserable 
brute. 



HENRY THE THIRD. 117 



CHAPTER .XV. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE THIRD, CALLED HENRY THE THIRD 
OP WINCHESTER. 

If any of the English barons remembered the murdered 
Arthur's sister, Eleanor, the fair maid of Brittany, shut up 
in her convent at.. Bristol, none among them spoke of her 
now, or maintained her right to the crown. The dead 
usurpers eldest boy, Henry by name, was taken by the 
Earl of Pembroke, the marshal of England, to the city of 
Gloucester, and the p? crowned in great haste when he was 
only ten years old. As the crown itself had been lost with 
the king's treasure, in the raging water, and, as there was 
no time to make another, they put a circle of plain gold 
upon his head instead. " We have been the enemies of 
this child's father," said Lord Pembroke, a good and true 
gentleman, to the few lords who were present, " and he 
merited our ill-will ; but the child himself is innocent, and 
his youth demands our friendship and protection." Those 
lords felt tenderly towards the little boy, remembering 
their own young children; and they bowed their heads, 
and said, " Long live King Henry the Third ! " 

Next, a great council met at Bristol, revised Magna 
Charta, and made Lord Pembroke Regent or Protector of 
England, as the king was too young to reign alone. The 
next tjiing to be done was to get rid of Prince Louis of 
Prance, and to win over those English barons who were 
still ranged under his banner. He was strong in many 
parts of England, and in London itself; and he held, 
among other places, a certain castle called the Castle of 
Mount Sorel, in Leicestershire. To this fortress, after some 
skirmishing and truce-making, Lord Pembroke laid siege. 
Louis despatched an army of six hundred knights and 
twenty thousand soldiers to relieve it. Lord Pembroke, 
who was not strong enough for such a force, retired with 



118 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

4 

all his men. The army of the French prince, which had 
marched there with fire and plunder, marched away with 
fire and plunder, and came, in a hoastful, swaggering man- 
ner, to Lincoln. The town submitted; but the castle in 
the town, held by a brave widow lady, named Nichola de 
Camville (whose property it was), made such a sturdy 
resistance, that the French count in command of the army 
of the French prince found it necessary to besiege this 
castle. While he was thus engaged, word was brought to 
him that Lord Pembroke, with four hundred knights, two 
hundred and fifty men with cross-bows, and a stout force 
both of horse and foot, was marching towards him. " What 
care I ? n said the French count. " The Englishman is not 
so mad as to attack me and my great army in a walled 
town ! " But the Englishman did it for all that, and did 
it, not so madly but so wisely, that he decoyed the great 
army into the narrow, ill-paved lanes and byways of Lin- 
coln, where its horse-soldiers could not ride in any strong 
body ; and there he made such havoc with them, that the 
whole force surrendered themselves prisoners, except the 
count, who said that he 'would never yield to any English 
traitor alive, and accordingly got killed. The end of this 
victory, which the English called, for a joke, the Fair of 
Lincoln, was the usual one in those times, — the common 
men were slain without any mercy, and the knights and' 
gentlemen paid ransom and. went home. 

The wife of Louis, the fair Blanche of Castile, duti- 
fully equipped a fleet of eighty good ships, and sent it over 
from France to her husband's aid. " An English fleet of 
forty ships, some good and some bad, gallantly met them 
near the mouth of the Thames, and took or sunk sixty-five* 
in one fight. This great loss put an end to the French 
prince's hopes. A treaty was made at Lambeth, in virtue 
of which the English baron* who had remained attached 
to his cause returned to their allegiance ; and it was engaged 
on both sides that the prince and all his troops should 
retire peacefully to France. It was time to go ; for war 
had made him so poor that he was obliged to borrow money 
from the citizens of London to pay his expenses home. 

Lord Pembroke afterwards applied himself to governing 
the country justly, and to healing the quarrels and disturb- 
ances that had arisen among men in the days of the bad 
King John. He caused Magna Charta to be still more 



HENRY THE THIRD. 119 

improved, and so amended the Forest Laws that a peasant 
was no longer put to death for killing a stag in a royal 
forest, but was only imprisoned. It would have been well 
for England if it could have had so good a protector many 
years longer ; but that was not to be. Within three years 
after the young king's coronation, Lord Pembroke died ; and 
you may see his «tomb, at this day, in the old Temple 
Church in London. 

The protectorship was now divided. Peter de Eoches, 
whom King John had made Bishop of Winchester, was in- 
trusted with the care of the person of the young sovereign ; 
and- the exercise of the royal authority was confided to 
Earl Hubert de Burgh. These two personages had 
from the first no liking for each other, and soon became 
enemies. When the young king was declared of age, 
Peter de Eoches, finding that Hubert increased in power 
and favor, retired discontentedly, and went abroad. For 
nearly ten years afterwards Hubert had full sway alone. 

But ten years is a long time to hold the favor of a king. 
This king, too, as he grew up, showed a strong resemblance 
to his father, in feebleness, inconsistency, and irresolution. 
The best that can be said of him is that he was not cruel. 
De Eoches coming home again, after ten years, and being 
a novelty, the king began to favor him, and to look coldly on 
Hubert. Wanting money besides, and having made Hu- 
bert rich, he began to dislike Hubert. At last he was 
made to believe, or pretended to believe, that Hubert had 
misappropriated some of the royal treasure; and ordered 
him to furnish an account of all he had done in his admin- 
istration. Besides which, the foolish charge was brought 
against Hubert that he had made himself the king's favor- 
ite by magic. Hubert very well knowing that he could 
never defend himself against such nonsense, and that his 
old enemy must be determined on his ruin, instead of an- 
swering the charges, fled to Merton Abbey. Then the king, 
in a violent passion, sent for the Mayor of London, and 
said to the mayor, " Take twenty thousand citizens, and 
drag me Hubert de Burgh out of that abbey, and bring him 
here." The mayor posted off to do it ; but the Archbishop 
of Dublin (who was a friend of Hubert's) warning the king 
that an abbey was a sacred place, and that if he committed 
any violence there he must answer for it to the Church, the 
king changed his mind, and called the mayor back, and de- 



120 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

clared that Hubert should have four months to prepare his 
defence, and should be safe and free during that time. 

Hubert, who relied upon the king's word, though I think 
he was old enough to have known better, came out of Mer- 
ton Abbey upon these conditions, and journeyed away to 
see his wife, a Scottish princess, who was then at St. Ed- 
mundVBury. 

Almost as soon as he had departed from the sanctuary, 
his enemies persuaded the weak king to send out one Sir 
Godfrey de Crancumb, who commanded three hundred 
vagabonds called the Black Band, with orders to seize him. 
They came up with him at a little town in Essex, called . 
Brentwood, when he was in bed. He leaped out of bed, 
got out of the house, fled to the church, ran up to the altar, 
and laid his hand upon the cross. Sir Godfrey and the 
Black Band caring neither for church, altar, nor cross, 
dragged him forth to the church-door, with their drawn 
swords flashing round his^head, and sent for a smith to 
rivet a set of chains upon him. When the smith (I wish 
I knew his name) was brought, all dark and swarthy with 
the smoke of his forge, and panting with the speed he had 
made, and the Black Band falling aside to show him the 
prisoner, cried with a loud uproar, '^Make the fetters 
heavy, make them strong ! n the smith dropped upon his 
knee, —but not to the Black Band, — and said, "This is 
the brave Earl Hubert de Burgh, who fought at Dover 
Castle, and destroyed the French fleet, and has done his 
country much good service. You may kill me if you 
like, but I will never make a chain for Earl Hubert de 
Burgh ! » 

The Black Band never blushed, or they might have 
blushed at this. They knocked the smith about from one 
to another, and swore at him, and tied the earl on horse- 
back, undressed as he was, and carried him off to the 
Tower of London. The bishops, however, were so indig- 
nant at the violation of the sanctuary of the Church, that 
the frightened king soon ordered the Black Band to take 
him back again ; at the same time commanding the Sheriff 
of Essex to prevent his escaping out of Brentwood Church. 
Well, the sheriff dug a deep trench all round the church, 
and erected a high fence, and watched the church night and 
day; the Black Band and their captain watched it too, like 
three hundred and one black wolves. For thirty-nine days, 



HENRY THE THIRD. 121 

Hubert de Burgh remained within. At length, upon the 
fortieth day, cold and hunger were too much for him ; and 
he gave himself up to the Black Band, who carried him 
off, for the second time, to the Tower. When his trial 
came on, he refused to plead ; but at last it was arranged 
that he should give up all the royal lands which had been 
bestowed upon him, and should be kept at the Castle of 
Devizes, in what was called " free prison," in charge of 
four knights appointed by four lords. There he remained 
almost a year, until, learning that a follower of his old 
enemy the bishop was made keeper of the castle, and fear- 
ing that he might be killed by treachery, he climbed the 
ramparts one dark night, dropped from the top of the high 
castle-wall into the moat, and, coining safely to the ground, 
took refuge in another church. From this place he was de- 
livered by a party of horse despatched to his help by some 
nobles, who were by this time in revolt against the king, 
and assembled in Wales. He was finally pardoned, and re- 
stored to his estates ; but he lived privately, and never more 
aspired to a high post in the realm, or to a high place in 
the king's favor. And thus end — more happily than the 
stories of many favorites of kings — the adventures of 
Earl Hubert de Burgh. 

The nobleg, who had risen in revolt, were stirred up to re- 
bellion by the overbearing conduct of the . Bishop of Win- 
chester, who, finding that the king secretly hated the Great 
Charter which had been forced from his father, did his ut- 
most to confirm him in that dislike, and in the preference 
he showed to foreigners over the English. Of this, and of 
his even publicly declaring that the barons of England 
were inferior to those of France, the English lords com- 
plained with such bitterness, that the king, finding them 
well supported by the clergy, became frightened for his 
throne, and sent away the bishop and all his foreign asso- 
ciates. On his marriage, however, with Eleanor, a French 
lady, the daughter of the Count of Provence, he openly fa- 
vored the foreigners again ; and so many of his wife's rela- 
tions came over, and made such an immense family-party 
at court, and got so many good things, and -pocketed so 
much money, and were so high with the English whose 
money they pocketed, that the bolder English barons mur- 
mured openly about a clause there was in the Great Charter 
which provided for the banishment of unreasonable favor- 
11 



122 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

ites. But the foreigners only laughed disdainfully, and 
said, " What are your English laws to us ? w 

King Philip of France had died, and had been succeeded 
by Prince Louis, who had also died after a short reign of 
three years, and had been succeeded by his son of the same 
name, — so moderate and just a man that he was not the 
least in the world like a king, as kings went. Isabella, 
King Henry's mother, wished very much (for a certain spite 
she had) that England should make war against this king ; 
and, as King Henry was a mere puppet in anybody's hands 
who knew how to manage his feebleness, she easily carried 
her point with him. But the Parliament were determined 
to give him no money for such a war. So, to defy the Par- 
liament, he packed up thirty large casks of silver, — I don't 
know how he got so much : I daresay he screwed it out of 
the miserable Jews, — and put them aboard ship, and went 
away himself to carry war into France, accompanied by his 
mother and his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who was. 
rich and clever. But he only got well beaten, and came 

The good-humor of the Parliament was not restored by 
this. They reproached the king with wasting the public 
money to make greedy foreigners rich, and were so stern 
with him, and so determined not to let him have more of it 
to waste if they could help it, that he was at his wit's end 
for some, and tried so shamelessly to get all he could from 
his subjects, by excuses or by force, that the people used to 
say the king was the sturdiest beggar in England. He 
took the cross, thinking to get some money by that means ; 
but, as it was very well known that he never meant to go 
on a crusade, he got none. In all this contention, the Lon- 
doners were particularly keen against the king, and the 
king liated them warmly in return. Hating or loving, how- 
ever, made no difference : he continued in the same condi- 
tion for nine or ten years, when, at last, the barons said, that, 
if he would solemnly confirm their liberties afresh, the Par- 
liament would vote him a large sum. 

As he readily consented, there was a great meeting held 
in Westminster Hall, one pleasant day in May, when all 
the clergy, dressed in their robes, and holding every one of 
them a burning candle in his hand, stood up (the barons 
being also there) while the Archbishop of Canterbury read 
the sentence of excommunication against any man, and all 



HENRY THE THIRD. 123 

men, who should henceforth, in any way, infringe the Great 
Charter of the kingdom. When he had done, they all put 
out their burning candles with a curse upon the soul of any 
one, and every one, who should merit that sentence. The 
king concluded with an oath to keep the charter, " As I am 
a man, as I am a Christian, as I am a knight, as I am a 
king ! " 

It was easy to make oaths, and easy to break them ; and 
the king did both, as his father had done before him. He took 
to his old courses again when he was supplied with money, 
and soon cured of their weakness the few who had ever really 
trusted him. When his money was gone, and he was once 
more borrowing and begging everywhere with a meanness 
worthy of his nature, he got into a difficulty with the Pope 
respecting the crown of Sicily, which the Pope said he had 
a right to give away, and which he offered to King Henry 
for his second sou, Prince Edmund. But if you or I 
give away what we have not got, and what belongs to some- 
body else, it is likely that the person to whom we give it 
will have some trouble in taking it. It was exactly so m 
this case. It was necessary to conquer the Sicilian crown 
before it could be put upon young Edmund's head. It could 
not be conquered without money. The Pope ordered the 
clergy to raise money. The clergy, however, were not so* 
obedient to him as usual : they had been disputing with him 
for some time about his unjust preference of Italian priests 
in England ; and they had begun to doubt whether the 
king's chaplain, whom he allowed to be paid for preaching 
in seven hundred churches, could possibly be, even by the 
Pope's favor, in seven hundred places at once. " The Pope 
and the king together," said the Bishop of London, "may 
take the mitre off my head ; but, if they do, they will find 
that I shall put on a soldier's helmet. I pay nothing." 
The Bishop of Worcester was as bold as the Bishop of Lon- 
don, and would pay nothing either. Such sums as the more 
timid or more helpless of the clergy did raise were squan- 
dered away, without doing any good to the king, or bringing 
the Sicilian crown an inch nearer to Prince Edmund's head. 
The end of the business was, that the Pope gave the crown 
to the brother of the King of France (who conquered it for 
himself), and sent the King of England in a bill of one 
hundred thousand pounds for the expenses of not having 
won it. 



124 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The king was now so much distressed, that we might 
almost pity him, if it were possible to pity a king so shabby 
and ridiculous. His clever brother Richard had bought 
the title of the King of the Romans from the German peo- 
ple, and was no longer near him, to help him with advice. 
The clergy, resisting the very Pope, were in alliance with 
the barons. The barons were headed by Simon de Mont- 
fort, Earl of Leicester, married to king Henry's sister, 
and, though a foreigner himself, the most popular man in 
England against the foreign favorites. When the king 
next met his Parliament, the barons, led by this earl, came 
before him, armed from head to foot, and cased in armor. 
When the Parliament again assembled, in a month's time, 
at Oxford, this earl was at their head ; and the king was 
obliged to consent, on oath, to what was called a Commit- 
tee of Government, consisting of twenty-four members, 
twelve chosen by the barons, and twelve chosen by him- 
self. m 

But, at a good time for him, his brother Richard came 
back. Richard's first act (the barons would not admit him 
into England on other terms) was to swear to be faithful to 
the Committee of Government, which he immediately be- 
gan to oppose with all his .might. Then the barons began 
to quarrel among themselves, especially the proud Earl of 
Gloucester with the Earl of Leicester, who went abroad in 
disgust. Then the people began to be dissatisfied with the 
barons, because they did not do enough for them. The 
king's chances seemed so good again at length, that he took 
heart enougb, or caught it from his brother, to tell the 
Committee of Government that he abolished them ; as to 
his oath, never mind that, the Pope said ! — and'to seize all 
the money in the mint, and to shut himself up in the 
Tower of London. Here he was joined by his eldest son, 
Prince Edward; and from the Tower he made public a 
letter of the Pope's to the world in general, informing all 
men that he had been an excellent and just king for five 
and forty years. 

As everybody knew he had been nothing of the sort, 
nobody cared muck for this document. It so chanced that 
the proud Earl of Gloucester dying, was succeeded by his 
son ; and that his son, instead of being the enemy of the 
Earl of Leicester, was (for the time) his friend. It fell out, 
therefore, that these two earls joined their forces, took 



HENRY THE THIRD. 125 

several of the royal castles in the country, and advanced as 
hard as they could on London. The London people, always 
opposed to the king, declared for them with great joy. 
The king himself remained shut up, not at all gloriously, 
in the Tower. Prince Edward made the best of his way 
to Windsor Castle. His mother the queen attempted to 
follow him by water ; but the people seeing her barge row- 
ing up the river, and hating her with all their hearts, ran 
to London Bridge, got together a quantity of stones and 
mud, and pelted the barge as it came through, crying furi- 
ously, " Drown the witch ! Drown her ! " They were so 
near doing it, that the Mayor took the old lady under his 
protection, and shut her up in St. Paul's until the danger 
was past. 

It would require a great deal of writing on my part, and 
a great deal of reading on yours, to follow the king through 
his disputes with the barons, and to follow the barons 
through their disputes with one another; so I will make 
short work of it for both of us, and only relate the chief 
events which arose out of these quarrels. The good king of 
France was asked to decide between them. He gave it as 
his opinion that the king must maintain the Great Charter, 
and that the barons must give up the Committee of Govern- 
ment, and all the rest that had been done by the Parlia- 
ment at Oxford, which the royalists, or' king's party, 
scornfully called the Mad Parliament. The barons declared 
that these were not fair terms, and they would not accept 
them. Then they caused the great bell of St. Paul's to be 
tolled, for the purpose of rousing up the London people, who 
armed themselves at the dismal sound, and formed quite an 
army in the streets. I am sorry to say, however, that in- 
stead of falling upon the king's party, with whom their 
quarrel was, they fell upon the miserable Jews, and killed 
at least five hundred of them. They pretended that some 
of these Jews were on the king's side, and that they kept 
hidden in their houses, for the destruction of the people, a 
certain terrible composition called Greek Fire, which could 
not be put out with water, but only burnt the fiercer for it. 
What they really did keep in their houses was money ; and 
this their cruel enemies wanted ; and this their cruel ene- 
mies took, like robbers and murderers. 

The Earl of Leicester put himself at the head of these 
Londoners and other forces, and followed the king to Lewes 
11* 



126 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

in Sussex, where he lay encamped with his array. Before 
giving the king's forces battle here, the earl addressed his 
soldiers, and said that King Henry the Third had broken 
so many oaths that he had become the enemy of God, and 
therefore they would wear white crosses on their breasts, as 
if they were arrayed, not against a fellow-Christian, but 
against a Turk. White-crossed, accordingly, they rushed- 
into the fight. They would have lost the day, — the king 
having on his side all the foreigners in England ; and from 
Scotland, John Comyn, John Baliol, and Robert Bruce, 
with all their men, — but for the impatience of Prince 
Edward, who, in his hot desire to have vengeance on the 
people of London, threw the whole of his father's army into 
confusion. He was taken prisoner ; so was the king ; so 
was the king's brother, the King of the Romans ; and five 
thousand Englishmen were left dead upon the bloody grass. 

For this success the Pope excommunicated the Earl of 
Leicester, which neither the earl nor the people cared at all 
about. The people loved him and supported him ; and he 
became the real king, having all the power of the govern- 
ment in his own hands, though he was outwardly respectful 
to King Henry the Third, whom he took with him wherever 
he went, like a poor old limp court-card. He summoned a 
parliament (in the year 1265), which was the first parlia- 
ment in England that the people had any real share in 
electing; and he grew more and more in favor with the 
people every day, and they stood by him in whatever he did. 

Many of the other barons, and particularly the Earl of 
Gloucester, who had become by this time as proud as his 
father, grew jealous of this powerful and popular earl, who 
was proud too, and began to conspire against him. Since 
the battle of Lewes, Prince Edward had been kept as a 
hostage, and, though he was otherwise treated like a prince, 
had never been allowed to go out without attendants ap- 
pointed by the Earl of Leicester, who watched him. The 
conspiring lords found means to propose to him, in secret, 
that they should assist him to escape, and should make him 
their leader; to which he very heartily consented. 

So on a day that was agreed upon, he said to his attend- 
ants after dinner (being then at Hereford), " I should like to 
ride on horseback, this fine afternoon, a little way into the 
country., As they, too, thought it would be very pleasant 
to have a canter in the sunshine, they all rode out of the 



HENRY THE THIRD. 127 

town together in a gay little troop. When they came to a 
fine level piece of turf, the prince fell to comparing their 
horses one with another, and offering bets that one was 
faster than another; and the attendants suspecting no 
harm, rode galloping matches until their horses were quite 
tired. The prince rode no matches himself, but looked on 
from his saddle, and staked his money. Thus they passed 
the whole merry afternoon. Now the sun was setting, and 
they were all going slowly up a hill, the prince's horse very 
fresh and all the other horses very weary, when a strange 
rider mounted on a gray steed appeared at the top of the 
hill, and waved his hat. " What does the fellow mean ? " 
said the attendants, one to another. The prince answered 
on the instant by setting spurs to his horse, dashing away 
at his utmost speed, joining the man, riding into the midst 
of a little crowd of horsemen, who were then seen waiting 
under some trees, and who closed around him ; and so he 
departed in a cloud of dust, leaving the road empty of all 
but the baffled attendants, who sat looking at one another, 
while their horses drooped their ears and panted. - 

The prince joined the Earl of Gloucester at Ludlow. 
The Earl of Leicester, with a part of the army and the 
stupid old king, was' at Hereford. One of the^ Earl of Lei- 
cester's sons, Simon de Montfort, with another part of the 
army, was in Sussex. To prevent these two parts from 
uniting was the prince's first object. He attacked Simon 
de Montfort by night, defeated him, seized his banners and 
treasure, and forced him into Kenilworth Castle in War- 
wickshire, which belonged to his family. 

His father, the Earl of Leicester, in the mean while, not 
knowing what had happened, marched out of Hereford, 
with his part of the army and the king to meet him. He 
came on a bright morning in August to Evesham, which is 
watered by the pleasant river Avon. Looking rather 
anxiously across the prospect towards Kenilworth, he saw 
his own banners advancing, and his face brightened with 
joy. But it clouded darkly when he presently perceived 
that the banners were captured and in the enemy's hands, 
and he said, " It is over. The Lord have mercy on our 
souls ! for our bodies are Prince Edward's." 

He fought like a true knight, nevertheless. When his 
horse was killed under him, he fought on foot. It was a 
fierce battle, and the dead lay in heaps everywhere. The 



128 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

old king, stuck up in a suit of armor on a big war-horse, 
which didn't mind him at all, and which carried him into 
all sorts of places where he didn't want to go, got into 
everybody's way, and very nearly got knocked on the head 
by one of his sou's men. But he managed to pipe out, " I 
am Harry of Winchester ! " and the prince, who heard him, 
seized his bridle, and took him out of peril. The Earl of 
Leicester still fought bravely, until his best son, Henry, was 
killed, and the bodies of his best friends choked his path ; 
and then he fell, still fighting, sword in hand. They 
mangled his body, and sent it as a present to a noble lady, 
— but a very unpleasant lady, I should think, — who was 
the wife of his worst enemy. They could not mangle his 
memory in the minds of the faithful people, though. 
Many years afterwards they loved him more than ever, and 
regarded him as a saint, and always spoke of him as " Sir 
Simon the Righteous." 

And even though he was dead, the cause for which he 
had fought still lived, and was strong, and forced itself 
upon the king in the very hour of victory. Henry found 
himself obliged to respect the Great Charter, however much 
he hated it, and to make laws similar to the laws of the 
great Earl of Leicester, and to be moderate and forgiving 
towards the people at last, — even towards the people of 
London, who had so long opposed him. There were more 
risings before all this was done ; but they were set at rest 
by these means, and Prince Edward did his best in all 
things to restore peace. One Sir Adam de Gourdon was 
the last dissatisfied knight in arms ; but the prince van- 
quished him in single combat, in a wood, and nobly gave 
him his life and became his friend, instead of slaying him. 
Sir Adam was not ungrateful. He ever afterwards re- 
mained devoted to his generous conqueror. 

When the troubles of the kingdom were thus calmed, 
Prince Edward and his cousin" Henry took the cross, and 
went away to the Holy Land, with many English lords 
and knights. Four years afterwards the King of the 
Eomans died ; and next year (1272), his brother, the weak 
King of England, died. He was sixty-eight years old then, 
and had reigned fifty-six years. He was as much of a 
king in death as he had ever been in life. He was the 
mere pale shadow of a king at all times. 



EDWARD THE FIRST. 129 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIRST, CALLED LONGSHANKS. 

It was now the year of our Lord 1272 ; and Prince 
Edward, the heir to the throne, being away in the Holy 
Land, knew nothing of his father's death. The barons, 
however, proclaimed him king, immediately after the 
royal funeral; and the people very willingly consented, 
since most men knew too well by this time what the 
horrors of a contest for the crown were. So King 
Edward the First, called, in a not very complimentary 
manner, Longshanks, because of the slenderness of his 
legs, was peacefully accepted by the English nation. 

His legs had need to be strong, however long and thin 
they were; for they had to support him through many 
difficulties on the fiery sands of Asia, where his small 
force of soldiers fainted, died, deserted, and seemed to 
melt away. But his prowess made light of it; and he 
said, " I will go on, if I go on with no other follower than 
my groom ! " 

A prince of this spirit gave the Turks a deal of trouble. 
He stormed Nazareth, at which place, of all places on 
earth, I am sorry to relate, he made a frightful slaughter 
of innocent people ; and then he went to Acre, where he 
got a truce of ten years from the Sultan. He had very 
nearly lost his life in Acre, through the treachery of a 
Saracen noble, called the Emir of Jaffa, who, making the 
pretence that he had some idea of turning Christian, and 
wanted to know all about that religion, sent a trusty 
messenger to Edward, very often, — with a dagger in his 
sleeve. At last, one Friday in Whitsun-week, when it 
was very hot, and all the sandy prospect lay beneath the 
blazing sun, burnt up like a great overdone biscuit, and 
Edward was lying on a couch, dressed for coolness in 
only a loose robe, the messenger, with his chocolate- 



130 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

colored face and his bright dark eyes and white teeth, 
came creeping in with a letter, and kneeled down like a 
tame tiger. But the moment Edward stretched out his 
hand to take the letter, the tiger made a spring at his 
heart. He was quick, but Edward was quick too. He 
seized the traitor by his chocolate throat, threw him to the 
ground, and slew him with the very dagger he had drawn. 
The weapon had struck Edward in the arm, and, although 
the wound itself was slight, it threatened to be mortal, 
for the blade of the dagger had been smeared with poison. 
Thanks, however, to a better surgeon than was often to be 
found in those times, and to some wholesome herbs, and, 
above all, to his faithful wife, Eleanor, who devotedly 
nursed him, and is said by some to have sucked the 
poison from the wound with her own red lips (which I am 
very willing to believe), Edward soon recovered and was 
sound again. 

As the king his father had sent entreaties to him to 
return home, he now began the journey. He had got as 
far as Italy, when he met messengers who brought him 
intelligence of the king's death. Hearing that all was 
quiet at home, he made no haste to return to his own 
dominions, but paid a visit to the Pope, and went in state 
through various Italian towns, where he was welcomed 
with acclamations as a mighty champion of the cross from 
the Holy Land, and where he received presents of purple 
mantles and prancing horses, and went along in great 
triumph. The shouting people little knew that he was 
the last English monarch who would ever embark in a 
crusade, or that within twenty years every conquest which 
the Christians had made in the Holy Land, at the cost of 
so much blood, would be won back by the Turks. But 
all this came to pass. 

There was, and there is, an old town standing in a 
plain in France, called Chalons. When the king was 
coming towards the place on his way to England, a wily 
French lord, called the count of Chalons, sent him a 
polite challenge to come with his knights and hold a fair 
tournament with the count and his knights, and make a 
day of it with sword aud lance. It was represented to the 
king that the Count of Chalons was not to be trusted, and 
that, instead of a holiday fight for mere show and in good* 
humor, he secretly meant a real battle, in which the En- 
glish should be defeated by superior force. 



EDWARD THE FIRST. 131 

The king, however, nothing afraid, went to the 
appointed place on the appointed day with a thousand 
followers. When the count came with two thousand, and 
attacked the English in earnest, the English rushed at 
them with such valor, that the count's men and the 
count's horses soon began to be tumbled down all over 
the field. The count himself seized the king round the 
neck; but the king tumbled him out of his saddle in 
return for the compliment, and, jumping from his own 
horse and standing over him, beat away at his iron armor 
like a blacksmith hammering on his anvil. Even when 
the count owned himself defeated, and offered his sword, 
the king would not do him the honor to take it, but 
made him yield it up to a common soldier. There had 
been such fury shown in this fight, that it was afterwards 
called the little battle of Chalons. 

The English were very well disposed to be proud of 
their king after these adventures; so, when he landed at 
Dover in the year 1274 (being then thirty-six years old), 
and went on to Westminster where he and his good 
queen were crowned with great magnificence, splendid 
rejoicings took place. For the coronation feast there were 
provided, among other eatables, four hundred oxen, four 
hundred sheep, four hundred and fifty pigs, eighteen wild 
boars, three hundred flitches of bacon, and twenty 
thousand fowls. The fountains and conduits in the street 
flowed with red and white wine instead of water; the 
rich citizens hung silks and cloths of the brightest colors 
out of their windows to increase the beauty of the show, 
and threw out gold and silver by whole handful to make 
scrambles for the. crowd. In short, there was such eating 
and drinking, such music and capering, such a ringing 
of bells and tossing of caps, such a shouting and singing, 
and revelling, as the narrow overhanging streets of old 
London City had not witnessed for many a long day. All 
the people were merry, — except the poor Jews, who, 
trembling within their houses, and scarcely daring to 
peep out, began to foresee that they would have to find 
the money for this joviality sooner or later. 

To dismiss this sad subject of the Jews for the present, I 
am sorry to add that in this reign they were most unmerci- 
fully pillaged. They were hanged in great numbers, on 
accusations of having clipped the king's coin, — which all 



132 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

kinds of people had done. They were heavily taxed ; they 
were disgracefully badged ; they were, on one day, thirteen 
years after the coronation, taken up with their wives and 
children, and thrown into beastly prisons, until they pur- 
chased their release by paying to the king twelve thousand 
pounds. Finally, every kind of property belonging to them 
was seized by the king, except so little as would defra}' - 
the charge of their taking themselves away into foreign 
countries. Many years elapsed before the hope of gain in- 
duced any of their race to return to England, where they 
had been treated so heartlessly and had suffered so much. 

If King Edward the First had been as bad a king to 
Christians as he was to Jews, he would have been bad in- 
deed. But he was, in general, a wise and great monarch, 
under whom the country much improved. He had no love 
for the Great Charter, — few kings had, through many, many 
years, — but he had high qualities. The first bold object 
which he conceived when he came home was to unite 
under one sovereign, England, Scotland, and Wales ; the 
two last of which countries had each a little king of its 
own about whom the people were always quarrelling and 
fighting, and making a prodigious disturbance, — a great 
deal more than he was worth. In the course of King 
Edward's reign, he was engaged, besides, in a war with 
France. To make these quarrels clearer, we will separate 
their histories and take them thus: Wales, first; France, 
second; Scotland, third. 

Llewellyn was the Prince of Wales. He had been on 
the side of the barons in the reign of the stupid old king, 
but had afterwards sworn allegiance to him. When King 
Edward came to the throne, Llewellyn was required to 
swear allegiance to him also, which he refused to do. The 
king, being crowned and in his own dominions, three times 
more required Llewellyn to come and do homage ; and 
three times more Llewellyn said he would rather not. He 
was going to be married to Eleanor de Montfort, a 
young lady of the family mentioned in the last reign ; and 
it chanced that this young ladj', coming from France with 
her youngest brother, Emebic, was taken by an English 
ship, and was ordered by the English king to be detained. 
Upon this the quarrel came to a head: The king went 
with his fleet to the coast of Wales, where, so encompass- 
ing Llewellyn that he could only take refuge in the bleak 



EDWARD THE FIRST. ^ 133 

mountain region of Snowdon, in which no provisions could 
reach him, he was soon starved into an apology, and into 
a treaty of peace, and into paying the expenses of the war. 
The king, however, forgave him some of the hardest con- 
ditions of the treaty, and consented to his marriage. And 
he now thought he had reduced Wales to obedience. 

But the Welsh, although they were naturally a gentle, 
quiet, pleasant people, who liked to receive strangers in 
their cottages among the mountains, and to set before them 
with free hospitality whatever they had to eat and drink, 
and to play to them on their harps, and sing their native 
ballads to them, were a people of great spirit when their 
blood was up. Englishmen, after this affair, began to be 
insolent in Wales, and to assume the air of masters ; and 
the Welsh pride could not bear it. Moreover, they believed 
in that unlucky old Merlin, some of whose unlucky old 
prophecies somebody always seemed doomed to remember 
when there was a chance of its doing harm; and just at 
this time some blind old gentleman, with a harp and a 
long white beard, who was an excellent person, but had 
become of an unknown age and tedious, burst out with a 
declaration, that Merlin had predicted that when English 
money had become round a prince of Wales would be 
crowned in London. Now, King Edward had recently 
forbid the English penny to be cut into halves and 
quarters for halfpence and farthings, and had actually in- 
troduced a round coin ; therefore the Welsh people said 
this was the time Merlin meant, and rose accordingly. 

King Edward had bought over Prince David, Llewellyn's 
brother, by heaping favors upon him ; but he was the first 
to revolt, being perhaps troubled in his conscience. One 
stormy night, he surprised the Castle of Hawarden, in pos- 
session of which an English nobleman had been left, killed 
the whole garrison, and carried off the nobleman a prisoner 
to Snowdon. Upon this, the Welsh people rose like one 
man. King Edward, with his army, marching from 
Worcester to the Menai Strait, crossed it — near to where 
the wonderful tubular iron-bridge now, in days so different, 
makes a passage for railway trains — by a bridge of boats 
that enabled forty men to march abreast. He subdued the 
Island of Anglesea, and sent his men forward to observe 
the enemy. The sudden appearance of the Welsh created 
a panic among them, and they fell back to the bridge. 

12 



134 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The tide had in the mean time risen, and separated the boats ; 
the Welsh pursuing them, they were driven into the sea, 
and there they sunk, in their heavy iron armor, by thou- 
sands. After this victory, Llewellyn, helped by the severe 
winter- weather of Wales, gained another battle ; but the 
king ordering a portion of his English army to advance 
through South Wales, and catch him between two foes, and 
Llewellyn bravely turning to meet this new enemy, he was 
surprised and killed, — very meanly, for he was unarmed 
and defenceless. His head was struck off, and sent to 
London, where it was fixed upon the Tower, encircled with 
a wreath, some say of ivy, some say of willow, some say of 
silver, to make it look like a gast^ coin in ridicule of the 
prediction. 

David, however, still held out for six months, though 
eagerly sought after by the king, and hunted by his own 
countrymen. One of them finally betrayed him, with his 
wife and children. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, 
and quartered: and from that time this became the 
established punishment of traitors in England, — a punish- 
ment wholly without excuse, as being revolting, vile, and 
cruel, after its object is dead ; and which has no sense in it, 
as its only real degradation (and that nothing can blot out) 
is to the country that permits on any consideration such 
abominable barbarity. 

Wales was now subdued. The queen giving birth to a 
young prince in the Castle of Carnarvon, the king showed 
him to the Welsh people as their countryman, and called 
him Prince of Wales ; a title that has ever since been 
borne by the heir-apparent to the English throne, which 
that little prince soon became by the death of his elder 
brother. The king did better things for the Welsh than 
that by improving their laws and encouraging their trade. 
Disturbances still took place, chiefly occasioned by the 
avarice and pride of the English lords, on whom Welsh 
lands and castles had been bestowed ; but they were sub- 
dued, and the country never rose again. There is a legend, 
that, to prevent the people from being incited to rebellion 
by the songs of their bards and harpers, Edward had them 
all put to death. Some of them may have fallen am one; 
other men who held out against the king ; but this general 
slaughter is, I think, a fancy of the harpers themselves, 
who, I dare say, made a song about it many years after- 



EDWARD THE FIRST. 135 

wards, and sang it by the Welsh firesides until it came to 
be believed. 

The foreign war of the reign of Edward the First arose 
in this way. The crews of two vessels, one a Norman ship 
and the other an English ship, happened to go to the same 
place in their boats to fill their casks with fresh water. 
Being rough, angry fellows, they began to quarrel, and 
then to fight, — the English with their fists, the Normans 
with their knives, — and in the fight a Norman was killed. 
The Norman crew, instead of revenging themselves upon 
those English sailors with whom they had quarrelled (who 
were too strong for them, I suspect), took to their ship again 
in a great rage, attacked the first English ship they met, 
laid hold of an unoffending merchant who happened to be 
on board, and brutally hanged him in the rigging of their 
own vessel with a dog at his feet. This so enraged the 
English sailors that there was no restraining them ; and 
whenever and wherever English sailors met Norman sail- 
ors, they fell upon each other tooth and nail. The Irish 
and Dutch sailors took part with the English, the French 
and Genoese sailors helped the Normans; and thus the 
greater part of the mariners sailing over the sea became, 
in their way, as violent and raging as the sea itself when 
it is disturbed. 

King Edward's fame had been so high abroad, that he 
had been chosen to decide a difference between France and 
another foreign power, and had lived upon the Continent 
three years. At first, neither he nor the French king 
Philip (the good Louis had been dead some time) inter- 
fered in these quarrels ; but when a fleet of eighty English 
ships engaged and utterly defeated a Norman fleet of two 
hundred in a pitched battle fought round a ship at anchor, 
in which no quarter was given, the matter became too 
serious to be passed over. King Edward, as Duke of 
Guienne, was summoned to present himself before the King 
of France at Paris, and answer for the damage done by his 
sailor subjects. At first he sent the Bishop of London as 
his representative, and then his brother Edmund, who was 
married to the French queen's mother. I am afraid Ed- 
mund was an easy man, and allowed himself to be talked 
over by his charming relations, the French-court ladies; 
at all events, he was induced to give up his brother's duke- 



136 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

dom forty days, — as a mere form, the French king said, to 
satisfy his honor, — and he was so very much astonished, 
when the time was out, to find that the French king had 
no idea of giving it up again, that I should not wonder if 
it hastened his death, which soon took place. 

King Edward was a king to win his foreign dukedom 
back again, if it could be won by energy and valor. He 
raised a large army, renounced his allegiance as Duke of 
Guienne, and crossed the sea to carry war into France. 
Before any important battle was fought, however, a truce 
was agreed upon for two years, and in the course of that 
time the Pope effected a reconciliation. King Edward, who 
was now a widower, having lost his affectionate and good 
wife, Eleanor, married the French king's sister, Margaret; 
and the Prince of Wales was contracted to the French 
king's daughter, Isabella. 

Out of bad things, good things sometimes arise. Out of 
this hanging of the innocent merchant, and the bloodshed 
and strife it caused, there came to be established one of 
the greatest powers that the English people now possess. 
The preparations for the war being very expensive, and 
King Edward greatly wanting money, and being very ar- 
bitrary in his ways of raising it, some of the barons began 
firmly to oppose him. Two of them in particular, Hum- 
phrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Roger Bigod, Earl 
of Norfolk, were so stout against him that they maintained 
he had no right to command them to head his forces in 
Guienne, and flatly refused to go there. " By Heaven, Sir 
Earl," said the king to the Earl of. Hereford, in a great 
passion, " you shall either go or be hanged ! " " By Heaven, 
Sir King," replied the earl, " I will neither go nor yet will 
I be hanged ; " and both he and the other earl sturdily left 
the court, attended by many lords. The king tried every 
means of raising money. He taxed the clergy, in spite of 
all the Pope said to the contrary ; and when they refused 
to pay reduced them to submission by saying, Very well, 
then they had no claim upon the government for protec- 
tion, and any man might plunder them who would, — which 
a good many men were very ready to do, and very readily 
did, and which the clergy found too losing a game to be 
played at long. He seized all the wool and leather in the 
hands of the merchants, promising to pay for it some fine 
day j and he set a tax upon the exportation of wool, which 



EDWARD THE FIRST. 137 

was so unpopular among the traders that it was called 
" The evil toll." But all would not do. The barons, led 
by those two great earls, declared any taxes imposed with- 
out the consent of Parliament unlawful ; and the Parlia- 
ment refused to impose taxes, until the king should confirm 
afresh the two Great Charters, and should solemly declare 
in writing that there was no power in the country to raise 
money from the people evermore but the power of Parlia- 
ment representing all ranks of the people. The king was 
very unwilling to diminish his own power by allowing this 
great privilege in the Parliament ; but there was no help 
for it, and he at last complied. We shall come to another 
king, by and by, who might have saved his head from roll- 
ing off, if he had profited by this example. 

The people gained other benefits in Parliament from the 
good sense and wisdom of this king. Many of the laws 
were much improved ; provision was made for the greater 
safety of travellers, and the apprehension of thieves and 
murderers; the priests were prevented from holding too 
much land, and so becoming too powerful; and justices 
of the peace were first appointed (though not at first under 
that name) in various parts of the country. 

And now we come to Scotland, which was the great and 
lasting trouble of the reign of King Ettward^he First. 

About thirteen years after King Edward's coronation, 
Alexander the Third, the King of Scotland, died of a fall 
from his horse. He had been married to Margaret, King 
Edward's sister. All their children being dead, the Scottish 
crown became the right of a young princess only eight 
years old, the daughter of Eric, King of Norway, who had 
married a daughter of the deceased sovereign. King Ed- 
ward proposed that the Maiden of Norway, as this princess 
was called, should be engaged to be married to his eldest 
son ; but unfortunately, as she was coming over to England, 
she fell sick, and, landing on one of the OrkneyTslands, died 
there. A great commotion immediately began in Scotland, 
where as many as thirteen noisy claimants to the vacant 
throne started up, and made a general confusion. 

King Edward being much renowned for his sagacity and 

justice, it seems to have been agreed to refer the dispute 

to him. He accepted the trust, and went with an army to 

the Border-land where England and Scotland joined. 

12* 



138 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

There, he called upon the Scottish gentlemen to meet him 
at the castle of Norham, on the English side of the River 
Tweed; and to that castle they came. But, before he 
would take any step in the business, he required those 
Scottish gentlemen, one and all, to do homage to him as their 
superior lord; and when they heistated, he said, "By holy 
Edward, whose crown I wear, I will have my rights, or I I 
will die in maintaining them ! " The Scottish gentlemen, 
who had not expected this, were disconcerted, and asked , 
for three weeks to think about it. 

At the end of the three weeks, another meeting took 
place, on a green plain on the Scottish side of the river. 
Of all the competitors for the Scottish throne, there were 
only two who had any real claim, in right of their near 
kindred to the royal family. These were John Baliol 
and Robert Bruce ; * and the right was, I have no doubt 
on the side of John Baliol. At this particular meeting 
John Baliol was not present, but Robert Bruce was ; and 
on Bobert Bruce being formally asked whether he acknowl- 
edged the King of England for his superior lord, he 
answered plainly and distinctly, Yes, he did. Next day 
John Baliol appeared, and said • the same. This point 
settled, some arrangements were made for inquiring into 
their titles. 

The inquiry occupied a pretty long time, — more than a 
year. While it was going on, King Edward took the op- 
portunity of making a journey through Scotland, and call- 
ing upon the Scottish people of all degrees to acknowledge 
themselves his vassals, or be imprisoned until they did. In 
the mean while, commissioners were appointed to conduct 
the inquiry, a parliament was held at Berwick about it, the 
two claimants were heard at full length, and there was a 
vast amount of talking. At last, in the great hall of the 
Castle of Berwick, the king gave judgment in favor of 
John Baliol ; who, consenting to receive his crown by the 
King of England's favor and permission, was crowned at 
Scone, in an old stone chair which had been used for ages 
in the abbey there, at the coronations of Scottish kings. 
Then King Edward caused the great seal of Scotland, 
used since the late king's death, to be broken in four pieces, 
and placed in the English treasury ; and considered that he 
now had Scotland (according to the common saying) under 
his thumb. 



EDWARD THE FIRST. 139 

Scotland had a strong will of its own yet, however. King 
Edward, determined that the Scottish king should not for- 
get he was his vassal, summoned him repeatedly to come 
and defend himself and his judges before the English Par- 
liament when appeals from the decisions of Scottish courts 
of justice were being heard. At length John Baliol, who 
had no great heart of his own, had so much heart put into 
him by the brave spirit of the Scottish people, who took 
this as a national insult, that he refused to come any more. 
Thereupon, the king further required him to help him in 
his war abroad (which was then in progress), and to give 
up, as security for his good behavior in future, the three 
strong Scottish castles of Jedburgh, Roxburgh, and Ber- 
wick. Nothing of this being done, — on the contrary, the 
Scottish people concealing their king among their moun- 
tains in the highlands, and showing a determination to 
resist, ^- Edward marched to Berwick with an army of thir- 
ty thousand foot, and four thousand horse, took the castle, 
and slew its whole garrison, and the inhabitants of the town 
as well, — men, women, and children. Lord Waeeenne, 
Eaid of Surrey, then went on to the Castle of Dunbar, 
before which a battle was fought, and the whole Scottish 
army defeated with great slaughter. The victory being 
complete, the Earl of Surrey was left as guardian of Scot- 
land ; the principal offices in that kingdom were given to 
Englishmen ; the more powerful Scottish nobles were obliged 
to come and live in England ; the Scottish crown and 
sceptre were brought away ; and even the old stone chair 
was carried, off, and placed in Westminster Abbey, where 
you may see it now. Baliol had the Tower of London 
lent him for a residence, with permission to range about 
within a circle of twenty miles. Three years afterwards 
lie was allowed to go to Normandy, where he had estates, 
and where he passed the remaining six years of his life ; 
far more happily, I daresay, than he had lived for a long 
while in angry Scotland. 

Now, there was in the west of Scotland a gentleman of 
small fortune, named William Wallace, the second son 
of a Scottish knight. . He was a man of great size and 
great strength ; he was very brave and daring ; when he 
spoke to a body of his countrymen, he could rouse them *in 
a wonderful manner by the power of his burning words ; 
he loved Scotland dearly, and he hated England with his 



140 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

■utmost might. The domineering conduct of the English 
who now held the places of trust in Scotland made them 
as intolerable to the proud Scottish people as they had 
been under similar circumstances to the Welsh ; and no 
man in all Scotland regarded them with so much smothered 
rage as William Wallace. One day an Englishman in 
office, little knowing what he was, affronted him. Wallace 
instantly struck him dead; and taking refuge among the 
rocks and hills, and there joining with his countryman, 
Sir William Douglas, who was also in arms against 
King Edward, became the most resolute and. undaunted 
champion of a people struggling for their independence 
that ever lived upon the earth. 

The English guardian of the kingdom fled before him ; 
and, thus encouraged, the Scottish people revolted every- 
where, and fell upon the English without mercy. The Earl 
of Surrey, by the king's commands, raised all the power of 
the border counties, and two English armies poured into 
Scotland. Only one chief, in the face of those armies, stood 
by Wallace, who, with a force of forty thousand men, awaited 
the invaders at a place on the B-iver Forth, within two miles 
of Stirling. Across the river there was only one poor 
wooden bridge, called the Bridge of Kildean, — so. narrow 
that but two men could cross it abreast. With his eyes 
upon this bridge, Wallace posted the greater part of his 
men among some rising grounds, and waited calmly. When 
the English army came up on the opposite bank of the river, 
messengers were sent forward to offer terms. Wallace sent 
them back with a defiance, in the name of the freedom of 
Scotland. Some of the officers of the Earl of Surrey, in 
command of the English, with their eyes also on the bridge, 
advised him to be discreet and not hasty. He, however, 
urged to immediate battle by some other officers, and par- 
ticularly by Cressingham, King Edward's treasurer, and 
a rash man, gave the word of command to advance. One 
thousand English crossed the bridge, two abreast ; the Scot- 
tish troops were as motionless as stone images. Two thou- 
sand English crossed ; three thousand, four thousand, five. 
Not a feather, all this time, had been seen to stir among the 
Scottish bonnets. Now they all fluttered. "Forward, one 
party, to the foot of the bridge ! n m cried Wallace, " and let 
no more English cross ! The rest, down with me on the 
five thousand who have come over, and cut them all to 



EDWARD THE FIRST. 141 

pieces ! " It was done, in the sight of the whole remainder 
of the English army, who could give no help. Cressingham 
himself was killed, and the Scotch made whips for their 
horses of his skin. 

King Edward was abroad at this time, and during the 
successes on the Scottish side which followed, and which 
enabled bold Wallace to win the whole country back again, 
and even to ravage the English borders. But, after a few 
winter months, the king returned, and took the field with 
more than his usual energy. One night, when a kick from 
his horse, as they both lay on the ground together, broke 
two of his ribs, and a cry arose that he was killed, he leaped 
into his saddle, regardless of the pain that he suffered, and 
rode through the camp. Day then appearing, he gave the 
word (still, of course, in that bruised and aching state) for- 
ward ! and led his army on to near Falkirk, where the Scot- 
tish forces were seen drawn up on some stony ground, 
behind ar-morass. Here he defeated Wallace, and killed fif- 
teen thousand of his men. With the shattered remainder, 
Wallace drew back to Stirling ; but, being pursued, set fire 
to the town that it might give no help to the English, and 
escaped. The inhabitants of. Perth afterwards set fire to 
their houses for the same reason ; and the king, unable to 
find provisions, was forced to withdraw his army. 

Another Eobert Bruce, the grandson of him who had 
disputed the Scottish crown with Baliol, was now in arms 
against the king (that elder Bruce being dead), and also 
John Comyn, Baliol's nephew. These two young men 
might agree in opposing Edward, but could agree in nothing 
else, as they were rivals for the throne of Scotland. Pro- 
bably it was because they knew this, and knew what troubles 
must arise, even if they could hope to get the better of the 
great English king, that the principal Scottish people ap- 
plied to the Pope for his interference. The Pope, on the 
principle of losing nothing for want of trying to get it, very 
coolly claimed that Scotland belonged to him ; but this was 
a little too much, and the Parliament in a friendly manner 
told him so. 

In the spring time of the year 1303, the king sent Sir 
John Segrave, whom h« made Governor of Scotland, with 
twenty thousand men to reduce the rebels. Sir John was not 
as careful as he should have been, but encamped at Rosslyn, 
near Edinburgh, with his army divided into three parts. The 



142 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Scottish forces saw their advantage, fell on each part sepa- 
rately, defeated each, and killed all the prisoners. Then came 
the king himself once more, as soon as a great army could be 
raised ; he passed through the whole north of Scotland, lay- 
ing waste whatsoever came in his way ; and he took up his 
winter quarters at Dunfermline. The Scottish cause now 
looked so hopeless, that Comyn and the other nobles made 
submission, and received their pardons. Wallace alone stood 
out. He was invited to surrender, though on no distinct 
pledge that his life should be spared ; but he still defied the 
ireful king, and lived among the steep crags of the High- 
land glens, where the eagles made their nests, and where 
the mountain torrents roared, and the white snow was deep, 
and the bitter winds blew round his unsheltered head, as he 
lay through many a pitch-dark night wrapped up in his 
plaid. Nothing could break his spirit ; nothing could lower 
his courage ; nothing could induce him to forget or to for- 
give his country's wrongs. Even when the Castle of Stirling, 
which had long held out, was besieged by the king with 
every kind of military engine then in use ; even when the 
lead upon cathedral roofs was taken down to help to make 
them ; even when the king, though an old man, commanded 
in the siege as if he were a youth, being so resolved to con- 
quer; even when the brave garrison (then found with 
amazement to be not two hundred people, including several 
ladies) were starved and beaten out, and were made to sub- 
mit on their knees and with every form of disgrace that 
could aggravate their sufferings, — even then, when there 
was not a ray of hope in Scotland, William Wallace was as 
proud and firm as if he had beheld the powerful and relent- 
less Edward lying dead at his feet. 

Who betrayed William Wallace in the end is not quite 
certain. That he was betrayed — probably by an attendant 
— is too true. He was taken to the castle of Dumbarton, 
under Sir John Menteith, and thence to London, where 
the great fame of his bravery and resolution attracted im- 
mense concourses of people to behold him. He was tried 
in Westmister Hall, with a crown of laurel on his head, — it 
is supposed because he was reported to have said that he 
ought to wear, or that he would wear, a crown there, — and 
was .found guilty as a robber, a murderer, and a traitor. 
What they called a robber (he said to those who tried him), 
he was, because he had taken spoil from the king's men. 



EDWARD THE FIRST. 143 

What they called a murderer, he was, because he had slain 
an insolent Englishman. What they called a traitor, he 
was not, for he had never sworn allegiance to the king, and 
had ever scorned to do it. He was dragged at the tails of 
horses to West Smithfield, and there hanged on a high gal- 
lows, torn open before he was dead, beheaded, and quartered. 
His head was set upon a pole on London Bridge, his right 
arm was sent to Newcastle, his left arm to Berwick, his legs 
to Perth and Aberdeen. But if King Edward had had 
his body cut into inches, and had sent every separate inch 
into a separate town, he could not have dispersed it half so 
far and wide as his fame. Wallace will be remembered in 
songs and stories while there are songs and stories -in the 
English tongue; and Scotland will hold him dear while her 
lakes and mountains last. 

Released from this dreaded enemy, the king made a 
fairer plan of government for Scotland, divided the offices 
of honor among Scotish gentlemen and English gentlemen, 
forgave past offences, and thought, in his old age, that his 
work was done. 

But he deceived himself. Comyn and Bruce conspired, 
and made an appointment to meet at Dumfries, in the 
church of the. Minorites. There is a story that Comyn 
was false to Bruce, and had informed against him to the 
king; that Bruce was warned of his danger and the 
necessity of flight, by receiving one night as he set at 
supper, from his friend the Earl of Gloucester, twelve 
pennies and a pair of spurs ; that as he was ridmg angrily 
to keep his appointment (through a snow-storm, with his 
horse's shoes reversed that he might not be tracked), he 
met an evil-looking serving-man, a messenger of Comyn, 
whom he killed, and concealed in whose dress he found 
letters that proved Comyn' s treachery. However this, may 
be, they were likely enough to quarrel in any case, being 
hot-headed rivals ; and, whatever they quarrelled about, 
they certainly did quarrel in the church where they met ; 
and Bruce drew his dagger, and stabbed Comyn, who fell 
upon the pavement. When Bruce came out, pale and 
disturbed, the friends who were waiting for him asked 
what was tli e matter? "I think I have killed Comyn," 
said he. " You only think so ? " returned one of them : " I 
will make sure ! " and going into the church, and finding him 
alive, stabbed him again and again. Knowing that the 



144 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

king would never forgive this new deed of violence, the 
party then declared Bruce King of Scotland; got him 
crowned at Scone, — without the chair; and set up the 
rebellious standard once again. 

When the king heard of it, he kindled with fiercer anger 
than he had ever shown yet. He caused the Prince of 
Wales and two hundred and seventy of the young nobility 
to be knighted, — the trees in the Temple Gardens were 
cut down to make room for their tents, and they watched 
their armor all night, according to the old usage, some 
in the Temple Church, some in Westminster Abbey ; — 
and at the public feast which then took place, he swore, 
by Heaven, and by two swans covered with, gold network 
which his minstrels placed upon the table, that he would 
avenge the death of Comyn, and would punish the false 
Bruce. And before all the company, he charged the 
prince, his son, in case that he should die before accom- 
plishing his vow, not to bury him until it was fulfilled. 
Next morning,- the prince and the rest of the young 
knights rode away to the Border-country to join the En- 
glish army, and the king, now weak and sick, followed in 
a horse-litter. 

Bruce, after losing a battle, and undergoing many 
dangers and much misery, fled to Ireland, where he lay 
concealed through the winter. That winter, Edward 
passed in hunting down and executing Bruce's relations 
and adherents, sparing neither youth nor age, show- 
ing no touch of pity or sign of mercy. In the follow- 
ing spring, Bruce re-appeared, and gained some victo- 
ries. In these frays, both sides were grievously cruel : 
for instance, Bruce's two brothers, being taken captives, 
desperately wounded, were ordered by the king to instant 
execution. Bruce's friend, Sir John Douglas, taking his 
own Castle of Douglas out of the hands of an English 
lord, roasted the dead bodies of the slaughtered garrison 
in a great fire made of every movable within it ; which 
dreadful cookery his men called the Douglas larder. 
Bruce, still successful however, drove the Earl of Pem- 
broke and the Earl of Gloucester into the Castle of Ayr, 
and laid siege to it. 

The king, who had been laid up all the winter, but had 
directed the army from his sick-bed, now advanced to 
Carlisle, and there, causing the litter in which he had 



EDWAKD THE FIRST. 145 

travelled to be placed in the cathedral as an offering to 
Heaven, mounted his horse once more, and for the last 
time. He was now sixty-nine years old, and had reigned 
thirty-five years. He was so ill, that in four days he could 
go no more than six miles; still, even at that pace, he went 
on, and resolutely kept his face towards the Border. At 
length he lay down at the village of Burgh-upon-Sands ; 
and there, telling those around him to impress upon the 
prince that he was to remember his father's vow, and was 
never to rest until he had thoroughly subdued Scotland, he 
yielded up his last breath. 



U6 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SECOND. 

King Edward the Second, the first Prince of Wales, 
was twenty-three years old when his father died. There was 
a certain favorite of his, a young man from Gascony, named 
Piers Gaveston, of whom his father had so much dis- 
approved that he had ordered him out of England, and had 
made his son swear by the side of his sick-bed, never to 
bring him back. But the prince no sooner found himself 
king than he broke his oath, as so many other princes and 
kings did (they were far too ready to take oaths), and sent 
for his dear friend immediately. 

Now this same Gaveston was handsome enough, but was 
a reckless, insolent, audacious fellow. He was detested by 
the proud English lords : not only because he had such 
power over the king, and made the court such a dissipated 
place, but also because he could ride better than they at 
tournaments, and was used, in his impudence, to cut very 
bad jokes on them, — calling one the old hog; another the 
stage-player ; another the Jew ; another the black dog of 
Ardenne. This was as poor wit as need be, but it made 
those lords very wroth ; and the surly Earl of Warwick, 
who was the black dog, swore that the time should come 
when Piers Gaveston should feel the black dog's teeth. 

It was not come yet, however, nor did it seem to be 
coming. The king made him Earl of Cornwall, and gave 
him vast riches; and when the king went over to France 
to marry the French princess, Isabella, daughter of Philip 
le Bel, who was said to be the most beautiful woman in 
the world, he made Gaveston regent Of the kingdom. His 
splendid marriage ceremony in the Church of Our Lady at 
Boulogne, where there were four kings and three queens 
present (quite a pack of court-cards, for I dare say the 
knaves were not wanting), being over, he seemed to care 



EDWARD THE SECOND. 147 

little or nothing for his beautiful wife, but was wild with 
impatience to meet Gaveston again. 

When he landed at home, he paid no attention to any- 
body else, but ran into the favorite's arms before a great 
concourse of people, and hugged him, and kissed him, and 
called him hisi brother. At the coronation which soon fol- 
lowed, Gaveston was the richest and brightest of all the 
glittering company there, and had the honor of carrying 
the crown. This made the proud lords fiercer than ever ; 
the people, too, despised the favorite, and would never call 
him Earl of Cornwall, however much he complained to the 
king and asked him to punish them for not doing so, but 
persisted in styling him plain Piers Gaveston. 

The barons were so unceremonious with the king in giv- 
ing him to understand that they would not bear this favor- 
ite, that the king was obliged to send him out of the coun- 
try. The favorite himself was made to take an oath (more 
oaths !) that he would never come back ; and the barons 
supposed him to be banished in disgrace, until they heard 
that he was appointed Governor of Ireland. Even this 
was not enough for the besotted king, who brought him 
home again in a year's time, and not only disgusted the 
court and the people by his doting folly, but offended his 
beautiful wife, too, who never liked him afterwards. 

He had now the old royal want, — of money, — and the 
barons had the new power of positively refusing to let him 
raise any. He summoned a parliament at York ; the bar- 
ons refused to make one while the favorite was near him. 
He summoned another parliament at Westminster, and sent 
Gaveston away. Then the barons came completely armed, 
and appointed a committee of themselves to correct abuses 
in the state, and in the king's household. He got some 
money on these conditions, and directly set off with Gaves- 
ton to the Border-country, where they spent it in idling 
away the time and feasting, while Bruce made ready to 
drive the English out of Scotland. For, though the old 
king had even made this poor weak son of his swear (as 
some say) that he would not bury his bones, but would 
have them boiled clean in a caldron, and carried before the 
English army until Scotland was entirely subdued, the 
second Edward was so unlike the first that Bruce gained 
strength and power every day. 

The committee of nobles, after some months of delibera- 



148 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

tion, ordained that the king should henceforth call a par- 
liament together once every year, and even twice if 
necessary, instead of summoning it only when he chose. 
Further, that Gaveston should once more be banished, and 
this time on pain of death if he ever came back. The 
king's tears were of no avail : he was obliged to send his 
favorite to Flanders. As soon as he had don'e so, however, 
he dissolved the parliament, with th*e low cunning of a mere 
fool, and set off to the north of England, thinking to get 
an army about him to oppose the nobles. And once again 
he brought Gaveston home, and heaped upon him all the 
riches and titles of which the barons had deprived him. 

The lords saw now that there was nothing for it but to 
put the favorite to death. They could have done so legally, 
according to the terms of his banishment ; but they did so, 
I am sorry to say, in a shabby manner. Led by the Earl 
of Lancaster, the king's cousin, they first of all attacked 
the king and Gaveston at Newcastle. They had time to 
escape by sea; and the mean king, having his precious 
Gaveston with him, was quite content to leave his lovely 
wife behind. When they were comparatively safe, they 
separated : the king went to York to collect a force of sol- 
diers ; and the favorite shut himself up, in the mean time, 
in Scarborough Castle overlooking the sea. This was what 
the barons wanted. They knew tnat the castle could not 
hold out ; they attacked it, and made Gaveston surrender. 
He delivered himself up to the Earl of Pembroke, — that 
lord whom he had called the Jew, — on the earl's pledging his 
faith and knightly word, that no harm should happen to 
him and no violence be done him. 

Now, it was agreed with Gaveston, that he should be 
taken to the Castle of Wallingford, and there kept in 
honorable custody. They travelled as far as Dedington, 
near Banbury, where, in the castle of that place, they 
stopped for a night to rest. Whether the Earl of Pembroke 
left his prisoner there, knowing what would happen, or 
really left him, thinking no harm, and only going (as he pre- 
tended) to visit his wife, the countess, who was in the 
neighborhood, is no great matter now: in any case, he 
was bound as an honorable gentleman to protect his pris- 
oner, and he did not do it. In the morning, while the 
favorite was yet in bed, he was required to dress himself, 
and come down into the court-yard. He did so without 



EDWARD THE SECOND. 149 

any mistrust, but started and turned pale when he found 
it full of strange armed men. " I think you know me ? " 
said their leader, also armed from head to foot. " I am the 
black dog of ArdenneV 

The time was come when Piers Gaveston was to feel the 
black dog's teeth indeed. They set him on a mule, and 
carried him in mock state and with military music to the 
black dog's kennel, Warwick Castle, where a hasty 
council, composed of some great noblemen, considered what 
should be done with him. Some were for sparing him ; but 
one loud voice — it was the black dog's bark, I daresay — 
sounded through the castle hall, uttering these words, " You 
have the fox in your power. Let him go now, and you 
must hunt him again." 

They sentenced him to death. He threw himself at the 
feet of the Earl of Lancaster, — the old hog ; but the old 
hog was as savage as the dog. He was taken out upon the 
pleasant road leading from Warwick to Coventry, where the 
beautiful river Avon, by which, long afterwards, William 
Shakspeare was born and now lies buried, sparkled in 
the bright landscape of the beautiful May-day ; and there 
they struck off his wretched head, and stained the dust 
with his blood. 

When the king heard of this black deed, in his grief and 
rage he denounced relentless war against his barons ; and 
both sides were in arms for half a year. But it then be- 
came necessary for them to join their forces against Bruce, 
who had used the time well while they were divided, and 
had now a great power in Scotland. 

Intelligence was brought that Bruce was then besieging 
Stirling Castle, and that the governor had been obliged to 
pledge himself to surrender it, unless he should be relieved 
before a certain day. Hereupon the king ordered his nobles 
and their, fighting men to meet him at Berwick ; but the 
nobles cared so little for the king, and so neglected the 
summons and lost time, that only on the day before that 
appointed for the surrender did the king find himself at 
Stirling, and even then with a smaller force than he had 
expected. However, he had altogether a hundred thousand 
men, and Bruce had not more than forty thousand ; but 
Brace's army was strongly posted in three square columns, 
on the ground lying between the Burn or Brook of Bannock 
and the walls of Stirling Castle. 

13* 



150 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

On the very evening when the king came up, Bruce did 
a brave act that encouraged his men. He was seen by a 
certain Henry de Bohun, an English knight, riding 
about before his army on a little horse, with a light battle- 
axe in his hand, and a crown of gold on his head. This 
English knight, who was mounted on a strong war-horse, 
cased in steel, strongly armed, and able (as he thought) to 
overthrow Bruce by crushing him with his mere weight, set 
spurs to his great charger, rode on him, and made a thrust 
at him with his heavy spear. Bruce parried the thrust, and 
with one blow of his battle-axe split his skull. 

The Scottish men did not forget this, next day, when the 
battle raged. Randolph, Brace's valiant nephew, rode, 
with the small body of men he commanded, into such a host 
of the English, all shining in polished armor in the sun- 
light, that they seemed to be swallowed up and lost, as if 
they had plunged into the sea. But they fought so well, 
and did such dreadful execution, that the English staggered. 
Then came Bruce himself upon them, with all the rest of 
his army. While they were thus hard pressed and amazed, 
there appeared upon the hills what they supposed to be a 
new Scottish army, but what were really only the camp-fol- 
lowers, in number fifteen thousand, whom Bruce had taught 
to show themselves at that place and time. The Earl of 
Gloucester, commanding the English horse, made a last 
rush to change the fortune of the day, but Bruce (like Jack 
the Giant-killer in the story) had had pits dug in the 
ground, and covered over with turfs and stakes. Into these, 
as they gave way beneath the weight of the horses, riders 
and horses rolled by hundreds. The English were com- 
pletely routed ; all their treasure, stores, and engines were 
taken by the Scottish men ; so many wagons and other 
wheeled vehicles were seized, that it is related that they 
would have reached, if they had been drawn out in a line, 
one hundred and eighty miles. The fortunes of Scotland 
were, for the time, completely changed ; and never was a 
battle won more famous upon Scottish ground than this 
great battle of Bannockburn. 

Plague and famine succeeded in England ; and still the 
powerless king and his disdainful lords were always in con- 
tention. Some of the turbulent chiefs of Ireland made 
proposals to Bruce to accept the rule of that country. He 
sent his brother Edward to them, who was crowned King 



EDWARD THE SECOND. 151 

of Ireland. He afterwards went himself to help his brother 
in his Irish wars ; but his brother was defeated in the end 
and killed. Robert Bruce, returning to Scotland, still in- 
creased his strength there. 

As the king's ruin had begun in a favorite, so it seemed 
likely to end in one. He was too poor a creature to rely at 
all upon himself; and his new favorite was one Hugh le 
Despeistser, the son of a gentleman of ancient family. 
Hugh was handsome and brave ; but he was the favorite of 
a weak king, whom no man cared a rush for, and that was a 
dangerous place to hold. The nobles leagued against him, 
because the king liked him ; and they lay in wait both for 
his ruin and his father's. Now, the king had married him 
to the daughter of the late Earl of Gloucester, and had 
given both him and his father great possessions in Wales. 
In their endeavors to extend these, they gave violent offence 
to an angry Welsh gentleman, named John de Mowbray, 
and to divers other angry Welsh gentlemen, who resorted 
to arms, took their castles, and seized their estates. The 
Earl of Lancaster had first placed the favorite (who was a 
poor relation of his own) at court, and he considered his own 
dignity offended by the preference he received and the 
honors he acquired ; so he, and the barons who were his 
friends, joined the Welshmen, marched on London, and 
sent a message to the king demanding to have the favorite 
and his father banished. At first the kiug unaccountably 
took it into his head to be spirited, and to send them a bold 
reply ; but when they quartered themselves around Holborn 
and Clerkenwell, and went down armed to the Parliament 
at Westminster, he gave way, and complied with their de- 
mands. 

His turn of triumph came sooner than he expected. It 
arose out of an accidental circumstance. The beautiful 
queen, happening to be travelling, came one night to one of 
the royal castles, and demanded to be lodged and enter- 
tained there until morning. The governor of this castle, 
who was one of the enraged lords, was away, and in his ab- 
sence, his wife refused admission to the queen ; a scuffle 
took place among the common men on either side, and some 
of the royal attendants were killed. The people, who cared 
nothing for the king, were very angry that their beautiful 
queen should be thus rudely treated in her own dominions ; 
and the king, taking advantage of this feeling, besieged the 



152 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

castle, took it, and then called the two Despensers home. 
Upon this, the confederate lords and the Welshmen went 
over to Bruce. The king encountered them at Borough- 
bridge, gained the victory, and took a number of distin- 
guished prisoners ; among them, the Earl of Lancaster, now 
an old man, upon whose destruction he was resolved. This 
Carl was taken to his own castle of Pontefract, and there 
tried and found guilty by an unfair court appointed for the 
purpose : he was not e\en allowed to speak in his own de- 
fence. He was insulted, m pelted, mounted on a starved 
pony without saddle or bridle, carried out, and beheaded. 
Eight and twenty knights were hanged, drawn, and quar- 
tered. When the king had despatched this bloody work, 
and had made a fresh and a long truce with Bruce, he took 
the Despensers into greater favor than ever, and made the 
father Earl of Winchester. 

One prisoner, and an important one, who was taken at 
Boroughbridge, made his escape, however, and turned the 
tide against the king. This was Roger Mortimer, al- 
ways resolutely opposed to him, who was sentenced to death, 
and placed for safe custody in the Tower of London. He 
treated his guards to a quantity of wine into which he had 
put a sleeping potion ; and, when they were insensible, broke 
out of his dungeon, got into a kitchen, climbed up the 
chimney, let himself down from the roof of the building with 
a rope-ladder, pas^d the sentries, got down to the river, and 
made away in a boat to where servants and horses were 
waiting for him. He finally escaped to France, where 
Charles le Bel, the brother of the beautiful queen, was 
king. Charles sought to quarrel with the King of England, 
on pretence of his not having come to do him homage at 
his coronation. It was proposed that the beautiful queen 
should go over to arrange the dispute : she went, and wrote 
home to the king, that as he was sick and could not come 
to France himself, perhaps it would be better to send over 
the young prince, their son, who was only twelve years old, 
who could do homage to her brother in his stead, and in 
whose company she would immediately return. The king 
sent him; but both he and the queen remained at the 
French court, and Eoger Mortimer became the queen's 
lover. 

When the king wrote, again and again, to the queen to 
come home, she did not reply that she despised him too 



EDWARD THE SECOND. 153 

much to live with him any more (which was the truth), but 
said she was afraid of the two Despensers. In short, her 
design was to overthrow the favorites' power, and the king's 
power, such as it was, and invade England. Having ob- 
tained a French force of two thousand men, and being 
joined by all the English exiles then in France, she landed, 
within a year, at Orewell, in Suffolk, where she was imme- 
diately joined by the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, the king's 
two brothers ; by other powerful noblemen ; and lastly, by 
the first English general who was- despatched to check her, 
who went over to her with all his men. The people of 
London, receiving these tidings, would do nothing for the 
king, but broke open the Tower, let out all his prisoners, 
and threw up their caps and hurrahed for the beautiful 
queen. 

The king, with his two favorites, fled to Bristol, where he 
left old Despenser in charge of the town and castle, while 
he went on with the son to Wales. The Bristol men being 
opposed to the king, and it being impossible to hold the 
town with enemies everywhere within the walls, Despenser 
yielded it up on the third day, and was instantly brought 
to trial for having traitorously influenced what was called 
" the king's mind," — though I doubt if the king ever had 
any. He was a venerable old man, upwards of ninety years 
of age ; but his age gained no respect or mercy. He was 
hanged, torn open while he was yet alive, cut up into pieces, 
and thrown to the dogs. His son was soon taken, tried at 
Hereford before the same judge on a long series of foolish 
charges, found guilty, and hanged upon a gallows fifty feet 
high, with a chaplet of nettles round his head. His poor 
old father and he were innocent enough of any worse crimes 
than the crime of having been friends of a king, on whom, 
as a mere man, they would never have deigned to cast a fa- 
vorable look. It is a bad crime, I know, and leads to worse ; 
but many lords and gentlemen — I even think some ladies, 
too, if I recollect right — have committed it in England, who 
have neither been given to the dogs, nor hanged up fifty 
feet high. 

The wretched king was running here and there, all this 
itime, and never getting anywhere in particular, until he 
| gave himself up, and was taken off to Kenil worth Castle. 
[When he was safely lodged there, the queen went to Lon- 
don, and met the Parliament. And the Bishop of Hereford, 



154 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

who was the most skilful of her friends, said, What was to 
he done now ? Here was an imbecile, indolent, miserable 
king upon the throne : wouldn't it he better to take him off, 
and put his son there instead ? I don't know whether the 
queen really pitied him at this pass, but she began to cry : 
so the bishop said, " Well, my lords and gentlemen, what do 
you think, upon the whole, of sending down to Kenilworth, 
and seeing if his majesty (God bless him, and forbid we 
should depose him !) won't resign ? " 

My lords and gentlemen thought it a good notion : so a 
deputation of them went down to Kenilworth, and there the 
king came into the great hall of the castle, commonly dressed 
in a poor black gown ; and, when he saw a certain bishop 
among them, fell down, poor feeble-headed man, and made 
a wretched spectacle of himself. Somebody lifted him up ; 
and then Sir William Trussel, the Speaker of the House 
of Commons, almost frightened him to death by making him 
a tremendous speech, to the effect that he was no longer a 
king, and that everybody renounced allegiance to him. 
After which, Sir Thomas Blount, the steward of the 
household, nearly finished him, by coming forward and 
breaking his white wand, which was a ceremony only per- 
formed at a king's death. Being asked in this pressing 
manner what he thought of resigning, the king said he 
thought it was the best thing he could do. .So he did it, 
and they proclaimed his son next day. 

I wish I could close his history by saying, that he lived 
a harmless life in the castle and the castle-gardens at Kenil- 
worth, many years ; that he had a favorite, and plenty to 
eat and drink 3 and, having that, wanted nothing. But 
he was shamefully humiliated. He was outraged and 
slighted, and had dirty water from ditches given him to 
shave with, and wept, and said he would have clean warm 
water, and was altogether very miserable. He was moved 
from this castle to that castle, and from that castle to the 
other castle, because this lord, or that lord, or the other 
lord, was too kind to him ; until at last he came to Berke- 
ley Castle, near the Biver Severn, where (the Lord Berkeley 
being then ill and absent) he fell into the hands of two 
black ruffians, called Thomas Gottrnay and William 
Ogle. 

One night, — it was the night of Sept. 21, 1327, — dread- 
ful screams were heard, hj the startled people in the neigh- 



.EDWARD THE SECOND. 155 

boring town, ringing through the thick walls of the castle, 
and the dark deep night ; and they said, as they were thus 
horribly awakened from their sleep, " May Heaven be merci- 
ful to the king; for those cries forbode that no good is 
being done to him in his dismal prison ! " Next morning 
he was dead, — not bruised, or stabbed, or marked upon 
the body, but much distorted in the face; and it was 
whispered afterwards, that those two villains, Gournay and 
Ogle, had burnt up his inside with a red-hot iron. 

If you ever come near Gloucester, and see the centre 
tower of its beautiful cathedral, with its four rich pinnacles 
rising lightly in the air, you may remember that the 
wretched Edward the Second was buried in the old abbey 
of that ancient city, at forty-three years old, after being for 
nineteen years and a half a perfectly incapable king. 



156 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE THIRD. 

Roger Mortimer, the queen's lover (who escaped to 
France in the last chapter), was far from profiting by the 
examples he had had of the fate of favorites. Having, 
through the queen's influence, come into possession of the 
estates of the two Despensers, he became extremely proud 
and ambitious, and sought to be the real ruler of England. 
The young king, who was crowned at fourteen years of 
age with all the usual solemnities, resolved not to bear this, 
and soon pursued Mortimer to his ruin. 

The people themselves were not fond of Mortimer, — 
first, because he was a royal favorite ; secondly, because he 
was supposed to have helped to make a peace with Scotland 
which now took place, and in virtue of which the young 
king's sister Joan, only seven years old, was promised in 
marriage to David, the son and heir of Robert Bruce, who 
was only five years old. The nobles hated Mortimer because 
of his pride, riches, and power. They went so far as to 
take up arms against him ; but were obliged to submit. 
The Earl of Kent, one of those who did so, but who after- 
wards went over to Mortimer and the queen, was made an 
example of in the following cruel manner. 

He seems to have been any thing but a wise old earl ; 
and he was persuaded by the agents of the favorite and 
the queen, that -poor King Edward the Second was not 
really dead ; and thus was betrayed into writing letters 
favoring his rightful claim to the throne. This was made 
out to be high treason ; and he was tried, found guilty, and 
sentenced to be executed. They took the poor old lord out- 
side the town of Winchester, and there kept him waiting 
some three or four hours, until they could find somebody to 
cut off his head. At last, a convict said he would do it, if 
the government would pardon him in return; and they 



EDWARD THE THIRD. 157 

gave him the pardon, and, at one blow, he put the Earl of 
Kent out of his last suspense- 
While the queen was in France, she had found a lovely 
and good young lady named Philippa, who she thought 
would make an excellent wife for her son. The young king 
married this lady, soon after he came to the throne ; and 
her first child, Edward, Prince of Wales, afterwards became 
celebrated, as we shall presently see, under the famous title 
of Edward the Black Prince. 

The young king, thinking the time ripe for the downfall 
of Mortimer, took counsel with Lord Montacute how he 
should proceed. A parliament was going to be held at 
Nottingham ; and that lord recommended that the favorite 
should be seized by night in Nottingham Castle, where he 
was sure to be. Now this, like many other things, was 
more easily said than done ; because, to guard against 
treachery, the great gates of the castle were locked every 
night, and the great keys were carried up stairs to the queen, 
who laid them under her own pillow. But the castle had a 
governor ; and the governor, being Lord Montacute's friend, 
confided to him how he knew of a secret passage under- 
ground, hidden from observation by the weeds and bram- 
bles with which it was overgrown ; and how through that 
passage the conspirators might enter in the dead of the 
night, and go straight to Mortimer's room. Accordingly, 
upon a certain dark night at midnight, they made their 
way through this dismal place, startling the rats, and 
frightening the owls and bats ; and came safely to the 
bottom of the main tower of the castle, where the king met 
them, and took them up a profoundly-dark staircase in a 
deep silence. They soon heard the voice of Mortimer in 
council with some friends ; and bursting into the room with 
a sudden noise, took him prisoner. The queen cried out 
from her bed-chamber, " Oh, my sweet son, my dear son, 
spare my gentle Mortimer ! n They carried him off, how- 
ever ; and, before the next parliament, accused him of hav- 
ing made differences between the young king and his 
mother, and of having brought about the death of the Earl 
of Kent, and even of the late king ; for, as you know by 
this time, when they wanted to get rid of a man in those 
old days, they were not very particular of what they 
accused him. Mortimer was found guilty of all this, and 
was sentenced to be hanged at Tyburn. The king shut his 

14 



158 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

mother up in genteel confinement, where she passed the 
rest of her life; and now he hecame king in earnest. 

The first effort he made was to conquer Scotland. The 
English lords who had lands in Scotland, finding that theii 
rights were not respected under the late peace, made wai 
on their own account : choosing for their general, Edward, 
the son of John Baliol, who made such a vigorous fight, 
that in less than two months he won the whole Scottish 
kingdom. He was joined, when thus triumphant, by the 
king and parliament ; and he and the king in person be- 
sieged the Scottish forces in Berwick. The whole Scottish 
army coming to the assistance of their countrymen, such a 
furious battle ensued, that thirty thousand men are said to 
have been killed in it. Baliol was then crowned King of 
Scotland, doing homage to the King of England : but lit- 
tle came of his successes after all ; for the Scottish men rose 
against him, within no very long time, and David Bruce 
came back within ten years and took his kingdom. 

France was a far richer country than Scotland, and the 
king had a much greater mind to conquer it. So he let 
Scotland alone, and pretended that he had a claim to the 
French throne in right of his mother. He had, in reality, 
no claim at all; but that mattered little in those times. 
He brought over to his cause many little princes and sove- 
reigns, and even courted the alliance of the people of Flan- 
ders, — a busy, working community, who had very small 
respect for kings, and whose head man was a brewer. With 
such forces as he raised by these means, Edward invaded 
France ; but he did little by that, except run into debt in 
carrying on the war to the extent of three hundred thousand 
pounds. The next year he did better, gaining a great sea- 
fight in the harbor of Sluys. This success, however, was 
very short-lived ; for the Flemings took fright at the siege 
of St. Omer and ran away, leaving their weapons and bag- 
gage behind them. Philip, the French king, coming up 
with his army, and Edward being very anxious to decide 
the war, proposed to settle the difference by single combat 
with him, or by a fight of one hundred knights on each 
side. The French king said he thanked him ; but, being 
very well as he was, he would rather not. So, after some 
skirmishing and talking, a short peace was made. 

It was soon broken by King Edward's favoring the cause 
of John, Earl of Montford, a French nobleman, who asserted 



EDWARD THE THIRD. 159 

a claim of his own against the French king, and offered 
to do homage to England for the crown of France, if he 
could obtain it through England's help. This French lord 
himself was soon defeated by the French king's son, and 
shut up in a tower in Paris ; but his wife, a courageous and 
beautiful woman, who is said to have had the courage of a 
man and the heart of a lion, assembled the people of Brit- 
tany where she then was ; and, showing them her infant 
son, made many pathetic entreaties to them not to desert 
her and their young lord. They took fire at this appeal, 
and rallied round her in the strong Castle of Hennebon. 
Here she was not only besieged without by the French 
under Charles de Blois, but was endangered within by a 
dreary old bishop, who was always representing to the peo- 
ple what horrors they must undergo if they were faithful, — 
first from famine, and afterwards from fire and sword. But 
this noble lady, whose heart never failed her, encouraged 
her soldiers by her own .example ; went from post to post 
like a great general ; even mounted on horseback fully 
armed, and, issuing from the castle by a by-path, fell upon 
the French camp, set fire to the tents, and threw the whole 
force into disorder. This done, she got safely back to Hen- 
nebon again, and was received with loud shouts of joy by 
the defenders of the castle, who had given her up for lost. 
As they were now very short of provisions, however, and as 
they could not dine of enthusiasm, and as the old bishop 
was always saying, " I told you what it would come to ! " 
they began to lose heart, and to talk of yielding the castle 
up. The* brave countess retiring to an upper room, and 
looking with great grief out to sea, where she expected 
relief from England, saw, at this very time, the English 
ships in the distance, and was relieved and rescued ! Sir 
Walter Manning, the English commander, so admired her 
courage, that, being come into the castle with the English 
knights, and having made a feast there, he assaulted the 
French by way of dessert, and beat them off triumphantly. 
Then he and the knights came back to the castle with great 
joy ; and the countess, who had watched them from a high 
tower, thanked them with all her heart, and kissed them 
every one. 

This noble lady distinguished herself afterwards in a sea- 
fight with the French off Guernsey, when she was on her 
way to England to ask for more troops. Her great spirit 



100 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

roused another lady, the wife of another French lord (whom 
the French king very barbarously murdered), to distinguish 
herself scarcely less. The time was fast coming, however, 
when Edward, Prince of Wales, was to be the great star of 
this French and English war. 

It was in the month of July, 1346, when the king 
embarked at Southampton for France, with an army of 
about thirty thousand men in all, attended by the 
Prince of Wales and by several of the chief nobles. He 
landed at La Hogue in Normandy; and, burning and 
destroying as he went, according to custom, advanced up 
the left bank of the Kiver Seine, and fired the small towns, 
even close to Paris ; but, being watched from the right bank 
of the river by the French king and all his army, it came 
to this at last, that Edward found himself, on Saturday, the 
26th of August, 1346, on a rising ground, behind the little 
French village of Crecy, face to face with the French king's 
force. And although the French king had an enormous 
army, — in number more than eight times his, — he there 
resolved to beat him or be beaten. 

The young prince, assisted by the Earl of Oxford and 
the Earl of Warwick, led the first division of the English 
army ; two other great earls led the second ; and the 
king the third. When the morning dawned, the king 
received the sacrament and heard prayers, and then, 
mounted on horseback with a white wand in his hand, 
rode from company to company, and rank to rank, cheering 
and encouraging both officers and men. Then the whole 
army breakfasted, each man sitting on the ground' where he 
had stood ; and then they remained quietly on the ground 
with their weapons ready. 

Up came the French king with all his great force. It 
was dark and angry weather ; there was an eclipse of the 
sun ; there was a thunder-storm, accompanied with tre- 
mendous rain ; the frightened birds flew screaming above 
the soldiers' heads. A certain captain in the French army 
advised the French king, who was by no means cheerful, 
not to begin the battle until the morrow. The king, 
taking this advice, gave the word to halt. But those 
behind not understanding it, or desiring to be foremost 
with the rest, came pressing on. The roads for a great 
distance were covered with this immense army, and with 
the common people from the villages, who were flourishing 



EDWARD THE THIRD. 161 

their rude weapons, and making a great noise. Owing to 
these circumstances, the French army advanced in the 
greatest confusion ; every French lord doing what he liked 
with his own men, and putting out the men of every other 
French lord. 

Now, their king relied strongly upon a great body of 
cross-bowmen from Genoa; and these he ordered to the 
front to begin the battle on finding that he could not stop 
it. They shouted once, they shouted twice, they shouted 
three times, to alarm the English archers ; but the English 
would have heard them shout three thousand times and 
would have never moved. At last the cross-bow men went 
forward a little, and began to discharge their bolts ; upon 
which the English let fly such a hail of arrows that the 
Genoese speedily made off; for their cross-bows, besides 
being heavy to carry, required to be wound up with a 
handle, an.d consequently took time to re-load : the English, 
on the other hand, could discharge their arrows almost as 
fast as the arrows could fly. 

When the French king saw the Genoese turning, he 
cried out to his men to kill those scoundrels, who were 
doing harm instead of service. This increased the confu- 
sion. Meanwhile the English archers, continuing to shoot 
as fast as ever, shot down great numbers of the French 
soldiers and knights ; whom certain sly Gornish-men and 
Welshmen, from the English army, creeping along the 
ground, despatched with great knives. 

The prince and his division were at this time so hard- 
pressed, that the Earl of Warwick sent a message to the 
king, who was overlooking the battle from a windmill, 
beseeching him to send'more aid. 

" Is my son killed ? " said the king. 

" No, sire, please God ! " returned the messenger. 

" Is he wounded ? w said the king. 

" No, sire." 

" Is he thrown to the ground ? " said the king. 

" No, sire, not so ; but he is very hard-pressed." 

" Then," said the king, " go back to those who sent you, 
and tell them I shall send no aid ; because I set my heart 
upon my son proving himself this day a brave knight, and 
because I am resolved, please God ! that the honor of a 
victory shall be his." 

These bold words, being reported to the prince and his 

14* 



162 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

division, so raised their spirits that they fought better 
than ever. The king of France charged gallantly with his 
men many times ; but it was of no use. Night closing in, 
his horse was killed under him by an English arrow; and 
the knights and nobles, who had clustered thick about him 
early in the day, were now completely scattered. At last, 
some of his few remaining followers led him off the field by 
force, since he would not retire of himself; and they jour- 
neyed away to Amiens. The victorious English, lighting 
their watch-fires, made merry on the field; and the king, 
riding to meet his gallant son, took him in his arms, kissed 
him, and told him that he had acted nobly, and proved 
himself worthy of the day and of the crown. While it was 
yet night, King Edward was hardly aware of the great 
victory he had gained ; but next day it was discovered 
that eleven princes, twelve hundred knights, and thirty 
thousand common men lay dead upon the French side. 
Among these was the King of Bohemia, an old blind man; 
who having been told that his son was wounded in the 
battle, and that no force could stand against the Black 
Prince, called to him two knights, put himself on horse- 
back between them, fastened the three bridles together, and 
dashed in among the English, where he was presently slain. 
He bore as his crest three white ostrich feathers, with the 
motto, Ich dien, signifying, in English, u I serve." This 
crest and motto were taken by the Prince of Wales in 
remembrance of that famous day, and have been borne by 
the Prince of Wales ever since. 

Five days after this great battle, the king laid siege to 
Calais. This siege — ever afterwards memorable — lasted 
nearly a year. In order to starve the inhabitants out, 
King Edward built so many wooden houses for the lodg- 
ings of his troops, that it is said their quarters looked like 
a second Calais suddenly sprung up around the first. Early 
in the siege, the governor of the town drove out what he 
called the useless mouths, to the number of seventeen 
hundred persons, men and women, young and old. King 
Edward allowed them to pass through his lines, and even 
fed them, and dismissed them with money ; but later in the 
siege he was not so merciful, — five hundred more, who 
were afterwards driven out, dying of starvation and misery. 
The garrison were so hard-pressed at last, that they sent 
a letter to King. Philip, telling him that they had eaten all 



EDWARD THE THIRD. 163 

the horses, all the dogs, and all the rats and mice that 
could be found in the place ; and that, if he did not relieve 
them, they must either surrender to the English, or eat 
one another. Philip made one effort to give them relief; 
but they were so hemmed in by the English power, that 
he could not succeed, and was fain to leave the place. 
Upon this they hoisted the English flag, and surrendered 
to King Edward. "Tell your general," said he to the 
humble messengers who came out of the town, "that I 
require to have sent here six of the most distinguished 
citizens, bare-legged and in their shirts, with ropes about 
their necks ; and let those six men bring with them the 
keys of the castle and the town." 

When the Governor of Calais related this to the people 
in the market-place, there was great weeping and distress, 
in the midst of which, one worthy citizen, named Eustace 
de Saint Pierre, rose up and said, that, if the six men re- 
quired were not sacrificed, the whole population would be, 
therefore he offered himself as the first. Encouraged by 
this bright example, five other worthy citizens rose up, one 
after another, and offered themselves to save the rest. The 
governor, who was too badly wounded to be able to walk, 
mounted a poor old horse that had not been eaten, and con- 
ducted these good men to the gate, while all the people cried 
and mourned. 

Edward received them wrathfully, and ordered the heads 
of the whole six to be struck off. However, the good queen 
fell upon her knees, and besought the king to give them 
up to her. The king replied, "I wish you had been some- 
where else ; but I cannot refuse you." So she had them 
properly dressed, made a feast for them, and sent them back 
with a handsome present, to the great rejoicing of the whole 
camp. I hope the people of Calais loved the daughter 
to whom she gave birth soon afterwards, for her gentle, 
mother's sake. 

Now came that terrible disease, the plagne, into Europe, 
hurrying from the heart of China, and killed the wretched 
people — especially the poor — in such enormous numbers, 
that one-half of the inhabitants of England are related to 
have died of it. It killed the cattle in great numbers too ; 
and so few working-men remained alive, that there were not 
enough left to till the ground. 

After eight years of differing and quarrelling, the Prince 



164 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of Wales again invaded France with an army of sixty thou- 
sand men. He went through the south of the country, 
burning and plundering wheresoever he went; while his 
father, who had still the Scottish war upon his hands, did 
the like in Scotland, but was harassed and worried in his 
retreat from that country by the Scottish men, who repaid 
his cruelties with interest. 

The French king, Philip, was now dead, and was suc- 
ceeded by his son John. The Black Prince, called by that 
name from the color of the armor he wore to set off his 
fair complexion, continuing to burn and destroy in France, 
roused John into determined opposition ; and so cruel had 
the Black Prince been in his campaign, and so severely had 
the French peasants suffered, that he could not find one 
who, for love, or money, or the fear of death, would tell him 
what the French king was doing, or where he was. Thus it 
happened that he came upon the French king's forces, all of a 
sudden, near the town of Poictiers, and found that the whole 
neighboring country was occupied by a vast French army. 
"God help us!" said the Black Prince : "we must make 
the best of it." 

So, on a Sunday morning, the 18th of September, the 
prince, whose army was now reduced to ten thousand men 
in all, prepared to give battle to the French king, who had 
sixty thousand horse alone. While he was so engaged, there . 
came riding from the French camp a cardinal, who had per- 
suaded John to let him offer terms, and try to save the 
shedding of Christian blood. " Save my honor," said the 
prince to this good priest, " and save the honor of my army, 
and I will make any reasonable terms." He offered to give 
up all the towns, castles, and prisoners he had taken, and 
to swear to make no war in France for seven years ; but, as 
John would hear of nothing but his surrender, with a hun- 
dred of his chief knights, the treaty was broken off, and the 
prince said quietly, " God defend the right : we shall fight 
to-morrow ! " 

Therefore, on the Monday morning, at break of day, the 
two armies prepared for battle. The English were posted 
in a strong place, which could only be approached by one 
narrow lane, skirted by hedges on both sides. The French 
attacked them by this lane, but were so galled and slain 
by English arrows from behind the hedges, that they were 
forced to retreat. Then went six hundred English bowmen 



EDWARD THE THIRD. 165 



mmd about, and, coming upon the rear of the French army, 
•ained arrows on them thick and fast. The French knights, 
thrown into confusion, quitted their banners, and dispersed 
n all directions. Said Sir John Chandosto the prince, 
f Bide forward, noble prince, and the day is yours. The 
i&ing of France is so valiant a gentleman, that I know he 
vTill never fly, and may be taken prisoner." Said the prince 
qo this, " Advance, English banners, in the name of God 
ind St. George ! " and on they pressed until they came up 
with the French king, fighting fiercely with his battle-axe, 
land when all his nobles had forsaken him, attended faith- 
fully to the last by his youngest son Philip, only sixteen 
years of age. Father and son fought well ; and the king 
had already two wounds in his face, and had been beaten 
down, when he at last delivered himself to a banished 
French knight, and gave him his right-hand glove in 
token that -he had done so. 

The Black Prince was generous as well as brave ; and he 
invited his royal prisoner to supper in his tent, and waited 
upon him at table, and, when they afterwards rode into 
London in a gorgeous procession, mounted the French king 
on a fine cream-colored horse, and rode at his side on a 
little pony. This was all very kind ; but I think it was, 
perhaps, a little theatrical too, and has been made more 
meritorious than it deserved to be, especially as I am in- 
clined to think that the greatest kindness to the King of 
France would have been not to have shown him to the peo- 
ple at all. However, it must be said for these acts of po- 
liteness, that, in course of time, they did much to soften the 
! horrors of war and the passions of conquerors. It was a 
I long, long time before the common soldiers began to have 
the benefit of such courtly deeds : but they did at last ; 
and thus it is possible that a poor soldier who asked for 
quarter at the battle of Waterloo, or any other such great 
fight, may have owed his life indirectly to Edward the 
Black Prince. 

At this time there stood in the Strand, m London, a 
palace called the Savoy, which was given up to the captive 
King of France and his son for their residence. ; As the 
King of Scotland had now been King Edward's captive for 
| eleven years too, his success was at this time tolerably 
I complete. The Scottish business was settled by the prisoner 
being released under the title of Sir David, King of Scot- 



166 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

land, and by his engaging to pay a large ransom. The state 
of France encouraged England to propose harder terms to 
that country, where the people rose against the unspeakable 
cruelty and barbarity of its nobles ; where the nobles rose 
in turn against the people ; where the most frightful outrages 
were committed on all sides ; and where the insurrection of 
the peasants, called the insurrection of the Jacquerie, from 
Jacques, a common Christian name among the country 
people of France, awakened terrors and hatreds that have 
scarcely yet p.assed away. A treaty, called the Great Peace, 
was at last signed, under which King Edward agreed to 
give up the" greater part of his conquests, and King John to 
pay, within six years, a ransom of three million crowns of 
gold. He was so beset by his own nobles and courtiers for 
having yielded to these conditions, — though they could 
help him to no better, — that he came back of his own will 
to his old palace-prison of the S^voy, and there died. 

There was a sovereign of Castile at that time, called 
Pedro the Cruel, who deserved the name remarkably 
well, having committed, among other cruelties; a variety 
of murders. This amiable monarch, being driven from his 
throne for his crimes, went to the province of Bordeaux, 
where the Black Prince — now married to his cousin Joai\ t , 
a pretty widow — was residing, and besought his help. The 
prince, who took to him much more kindly than a prince of 
such fame ought to have taken to such a ruffian, readily 
listened to his fair promises, and, agreeing to help him, sent 
secret orders to some troublesome disbanded soldiers of his 
and his father's who called themselves the Free Companions, 
and who had been a pest to the French people for some 
time, to aid this Pedro. The prince himself, going into 
Spain to head the army of relief, soon set Pedro on his 
throne again, — where he no sooner found himself, than, of 
course, he behaved like the villain he was, broke his word 
without the least shame, and abandoned all the promises 
he had made to the Black Prince. 

Now, it had cost the prince a good deal of money to pay 
soldiers to support this murderous king ; and finding him- 
self, when he came back disgusted to Bordeaux, not only 
in bad health, but deeply in debt, he began to tax his 
French subjects to pay his creditors. They appealed to 
the French king, Charles ; war again broke out; and the 
French town of Limoges, which the prince had greatly 



EDWARD THE THIRD. 167 

benefited, went over to the French king. Upon this he 
ravaged the province of which it was the capital ; burnt 
and plundered and killed in the old sickening way ; and 
refused mercy to the prisoners, men, women, and children, 
taken in the offending town, though he was so ill and so 
much in need of pity himself from Heaven that he was 
carried in a litter. He lived to come home, and make him- 
self popular with the people and parliament, and he died 
on' Trinity-Sunday, the 8th of June, 1376, at forty-six 
years old. 

The whole nation mourned for him as one of the most 
renowned and beloved princes it had ever had ; and he was 
buried with great lamentations in Canterbury Cathedral. 
Near to the tomb of Edward the Confessor, his monument, 
with his figure, carved in stone, and represented in the old 
black armor, lying on its back, may be seen at this day, 
with an ancient coat of mail, a helmet, and a pair of gaunt- 
lets hanging from a beam above it, which most people like 
to believe were once worn by the Black Prince. 

King Edward did not outlive his renowned son long. 
He was old j and one Alice Perrers, a beautiful lady, had 
contrived to make him so fond of her in his old age, that 
he could refuse her nothing, and made himself ridiculous. 
She little deserved his love, or — what I dare say she valued 
a great deal more — the jewels of the late (pieen, which he 
gave her among other rich presents. She took the very 
ring from his finger on the morning of the day when he 
died, and left him to be pillaged by his faithless servants. 
Only one good priest was true to him, and attended him to 
the last. 

Besides being famous for the great victories I have re- 
lated, the reign of King Edward the Third was rendered 
memorable in better ways, by the growth of architecture 
and the erection of Windsor Castle. In better ways still, 
by the rising up of Wickliffe, originally a poor parish 
priest, who devoted himself to exposing, with wonderful 
power and success, the ambition and corruption of the 
Pope, and of the whole church of which he was the head. 

Some of those Flemings were induced to come to Eng- 
land in this reign, too, and to settle in Norfolk, where they 
made better woollen cloths than the English had ever had 
before. The Order of the Garter (a very fine thing in its 
way, but hardly so important as good clothes for the nation) 



168 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

also dates from this period. The king is said to have picked 
up a lady's garter at a ball, and to have said, Honi soit qui 
mal y pense ; in English, "Evil he to him who evil thinks 
of it." The courtiers were usually glad to imitate what 
the king said or did, and hence from a slight incident the 
Order of the Garter was instituted and became a great 
dignity. So the story goes. 



RICHAKD THE SECOND. 169 



CHAPTER XIX. 

ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE SECOND. 

Bjchard, son of the Black Prince, a boy eleven years 
of age, succeeded to the crown, under the title of King 
Richard the Second. The whole English nation were 
ready to admire him for the sake of his brave father. As 
to the lords and ladies about the court, they declared him 
to be the -most beautiful, the wisest, and the best, even 
of princes, whom the lords and ladies about the court 
generally declare to be the most beautiful, the wisest, and 
the best of mankind. To natter a poor boy in this base 
manner was not a very likely way to develop whatever 
good was in him; and it ^brought him to any thing but 
a good or happy end. 

The Duke of Lancaster, the young king's uncle, — 
commonly called John of Gaunt, from having been born 
at Ghent, which the common people so pronounced, — was 
supposed to have some thoughts of the throne himself; 
but as he was not popular, and the memory of the Black 
Prince was, he submitted to his nephew. 

The war with France being still unsettled, the gov- 
ernment of England wanted money to provide for the ex- 
penses that might arise out of it : accordingly a certain 
tax, called the poll-tax, which had originated in the last 
reign, was ordered to be levied on the people. This was 
a tax on every person in the kingdom, male and female, 
above the age of fourteen, of three groats (or three four- 
penny pieces) a year ; clergymen were charged more, and 
only beggars were exempt. 

I have no need to repeat that the common people of 
England had long been suffering under great oppression. 
They were still the mere slaves of the lords of the land 
>n which they lived, and were on most occasions harshly 
ind unjustly treated. But they had begun by this time 

15 



170 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

to think very seriously of not bearing quite so much; an 
probably were emboldened by that French insurrection 
mentioned in the last chapter. 

The people of Essex rose against the poll-tax, anc 
being severely handled by the government officers, kille \ 
some of them. At this very time one of the tax-collecl 1 
ors, going his rounds from house to house, at Dartford i : 
Kent came to the cottage of one Wat, a tiler by trad* 
and claimed the tax upon his daughter. Her mothei 
who was at home, declared that she was under the ag 
of fourteen ; upon that, the collector (as other collector 
had already done in different parts of England) behave* 
in a savage way, and brutally insulted Wat Tyler's daugh 
ter. The daughter screamed, the mother screamed. Wa 
the Tiler, who was at work not far off, ran to the spot 
and did what any honest father under such provocatioi 
might have done, — struck the collector dead at a blow. 

Instantly the people of that town uprose as one man! 
They made Wat Tyler their leader ; they joined with th 
people of Essex, who were in arms under a priest calle<! 
Jack Straw; they took out of prison another pries 1 
named John Ball ; and, gathering in numbers as the;; 1 
went along, advanced, in a great confused army of poo 
men, to Blackheath. It is said that they wanted to abol 
ish all property, and to declare all men equal. I do no' 
think this very likely: because they stopped the travel 
lers on the roads, and made them swear to be true t< 
King Richard and the people. Nor were they at all 
disposed to injure those who had done them no harm, 
merely because they were of high station ; for the king'. 1 ! 
mother, who had to pass through their camp at Black 
heath, on her way to her young son, lying for safety ir 
the Tower of London, had merely to kiss a few dirty- 
faced, rough-bearded men who were noisily fond of royalty 
and so got away in perfect safety. Next day the whole 
mass marched on to London Bridge. 

There was a drawbridge in the middle, which William 
Walworth, the mayor, caused to be raised to preven; 
their coming into the city ; but they soon terrified thf 
citizens into lowering it again, and spread themselves 
with great uproar, over the streets. They broke opei 
the prisons ; they burned the papers in Lambeth Palace 
they destroyed the Duke of Lancaster's palace, tht 



RICHARD THE SECOND. jft 

Savoy, in the Strand, said to be the most beautiful and 
splendid in England; they set fire to the books and 
documents in the Temple, and made a great riot. Many of 
these outrages were committed in drunkenness, since 
those citizens who had well-filled cellars were only too 
glad to throw them open to save the rest of their prop- 
erty ; but even the drunken rioters were very careful to 
steal nothing. They were so angry with one man, who 
was seen to take a silver cup at the Savoy Palace, and 
put it in his breast, that they drowned him in the river 
jup and all. ' 

The young king had been taken out to treat with 
;hem before they committed these excesses ; but he and 
:he people about him were so frightened by the riotous 
;houts, that they got back to the Tower in the best 
vay they could. This made the insurgents bolder : so they 
vent on noting away, striking off the heads of those who 
lid not, at a moment's notice, declare for King Richard 
jtnd the people ; and killing as many of the unpopular 
persons whom they supposed to be their enemies as they 
ould by any means lay hold of. In this manner they 
>assed one very. violent day, and then proclamation was 
aade that the king would meet them at Mile-end, and 
;rant their request. 

The rioters went to Mile-end to the number of sixty 
housand, and the king met them there; and to the 
ling the rioters peaceably proposed four conditions, 
list, that neither they, nor their children, nor any 
ommg after them, should be made slaves any more 
.econdly, that the rent of land should be fixed at a cer- 
ain price m money, instead of being paid in service, 
inrdly, that they should have liberty to buy and sell 
i all markets and public places, like other free men. 
ourthJy that they should be pardoned for past offences, 
teaven knows there was nothing very unreasonable in 
aese proposals! The young king deceitfully pretended 
) think so, and kept thirty clerks up all night writ- 
ig out a charter accordingly. 

Now, Wat Tyler himself wanted more than this He 
anted the entire abolition of the forest-laws. He was not 
c Mile-end with the rest ; but, while that meeting was being 
eld, broke into the Tower of London, and slew the arch- 
isnop and the treasurer, for whose heads the people had 



172 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

cried out loudly the day before. He and his men ever 
thrust their swords into the bed of the Princess of Wales, 
while the princess was in it, to make certain that none oi 
their enemies were concealed there. 

So Wat and his men still continued armed, and rod 
about the city. Next morning, the king with a small trail' 
of some sixty gentlemen — among whom was Walworth* 
the mayor — rode into Smithfield, and saw Wat and hi* 
people at a little distance. Says Wat to his men, " Ther ; 
is the king. I will go speak with him, and tell him wha 
we want." 

Straightway Wat rode up to him, and began to talk 
"King," says Wat, "dost thou see all my men tnere?" 
. " Ah ! " says the king. " Why ? " 

"Because," says Wat, "they are all at my command, am 
have sworn to do whatever I bid them." 

Some declared afterwards, that, as Wat said this, he lai<> 
his hand on the king's bridle. Others declared that \i 
was seen to play with his own dagger. I think, myseL 
that he just spoke to the king like a rough, angry man, a! 
he was, and did nothing more. At any rate, he was expect 
ing no attack, and preparing for no resistance, when Wal 
worth, the mayor, did the not very ..valiant deed of drawing d 
short sword, and stabbing him in the throat. He droppeij 
from his horse, and one of the king's people speedily finishes 
him. So fell Wat Tyler. Fawners and flatterers made 
mighty triumph of it, and set up a cry which will occasion 
ally find an echo to this day. But Wat was a hard-workin ; 
man, who had suffered much, and had been foully outraged, 
and it is probable that he was a man of much higher naturl 
and a much braver spirit than any of the parasites who ex 
ulted then, or have exulted since, over his defeat. 

Seeing Wat down, his men immediately bent their bow 
to avenge his fall. If the young king had not had presenc 
of mind at that dangerous moment, both he and the mayc 
to boot might have followed Tyler pretty fast. But tin 
king, riding up to the crowd, cried out that Tyler was 
traitor, and that he would be their leader. They were s 
taken by surprise, that they set up a great shouting, an 
followed the boy until he was met at Islington by a larg 
body of soldiers. 

The end of this rising was the then usual end. As soo 
as the king found himself safe, he unsaid all he had sait 



RICHARD THE SECOND. 173 

,nd undid all he had done; some fifteen hundred of the 
ioters were tried (mostly in Essex), with great rigor, and 
xecuted with great cruelty. Many of them were hanged 
n gibbets, and left there as a terror to the country peo- 
ple; and, because their miserable friends took some of 
he bodies down to bury, the king ordered the rest to be 
hained up,, — which was the beginning of the barbarous 
ustom of hanging in chains. The king's falsehood in this 
msiness makes such a pitiful figure, that I think Wat Tyler 
appears in history as beyond comparison the truer and more 
espectable man of the two. 

! Richard was now sixteen years of age, and married Anne 
»f Bohemia, an excellent princess, who was called " the good 
Jueen Anne." She deserved a better husband; for the 
ang had been fawned and flattered into a treacherous, 
wasteful, dissolute, bad young man. 

There were two popes at this time (as if one were not 
isnough!), and their quarrels involved Europe in -a great 
Ileal of trouble. Scotland was still troublesome too ; and at 
iiome there was much jealousy and distrust, and plotting 
tnd counter-plotting, because the king feared the ambition 
>f his relations, and particularly of his uncle, the Duke of 
Lancaster ; and the duke had his party against the king, 
md the king had his party against the duke. Nor were 
shese home troubles lessened when the duke went to Castile 
;o urge his claim to the crown of that kingdom ; for then 
;he Duke of Gloucester, another of Richard's uncles, opposed 
rim, and influenced the Parliament to demand the dismissal 
)f the king's favorite ministers. The king said, in reply, that 
le would not for such men dismiss the meanest servant in 
ris kitchen. But it had begun to signify little what a king 
;aid when a parliament was determined: so Richard was at 
ast obliged to give way, and to agree to another govern- 
nent of the kingdom, under a commission of fourteen nobles, 
for a year. His uncle of Gloucester was at the head of this 
jommission, and, in fact, appointed everybody composing it. 

Having done all this, the king declared, as soon as he saw 
m opportunity, that he had never meant to do it, and that 
>t was all illegal; and he got the judges secretly to sign a 
declaration to that effect. The secret oozed out directly, 
iind was carried to the Duke of Gloucester. The Duke of 
Gloucester, at the head of forty thousand men, met the king 
m his entering into London to enforce his authority ; the 

15* 



I 

174 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

king was helpless against him; his favorites and ministe] 
were impeached and were mercilessly executed. Anion 
them were two men whom the people regarded with ver 
different feelings, — one, Bobert Tresilian, Chief Justice, wh 
was hated for having made what was called "the blood 
circuit" to try the rioters; the other, Sir Simon Burlej 
an honorable knight, who had been the dear friend of tlv 
Black Prince, and the governor and guardian of the king 
For this gentleman's life the good queen even begged o 
Gloucester on her knees; but Gloucester (with or withou 
reason) feared and hated him, and replied, that if she value. 
her husband's crown, she had better beg no more. All tlii 
was done under what was called by some the wonderful - 
and by others, with better reason, the merciless -*- parliament 1 

But Gloucester's power was not to last forever. He hel< 
it for only a year longer; in which y«ar the famous battl 
of Otterbourne, sung in the old ballad of Chevy Chase, wa 
fought. When the year was out, the king, turning suddenly 
to Gloucester, in the midst of a great council, said, "Uncle 
how old am I?" "Your highness," returned the duke, "l< 
in your twenty-second year." — "Am I so much ?" said th( 
king; "then I will manage my own affairs! I am mucl 
obliged to you, my good lords, for your past services, but J 
need them no more." He followed this up by appointing 
a new chancellor and a new treasurer, and announced to the 
people that he had resumed the government. He held ill 
for eight years without opposition. Through all that time, 
he kept his determination to revenge himself some day upoL 
his uncle Gloucester in his own breast. 

At last the good queen died ; and then the king, desiring 
to take a second wife, proposed to his council that he should 
marry Isabella of France, the daughter of Charles the 
Sixth, who, the French courtiers said (as the English court- 
iers had said of Bichard), was a marvel of beauty and wit, 
and quite a phenomenon, — of seven years old. The coun- 
cil was divided about this marriage, but it took place. It 
secured peace between England and France for a quarter of 
a century ; but it was strongly opposed to the prejudices 
of the English people. The Duke of Gloucester, who was 
anxious to take the occasion of making himself popular, de- 
claimed against it loudly ; and this at length decided the 
king to execute the vengeance he had been nursing so 
Ion 2. 



RICHARD THE SECOND." 175 

He went with a gay company to the Duke of Gloucester's 
house, Pleshey Castle, in Essex, where the duke,« suspecting 
nothing, came out into the court-yard to receive his royal 
visitor. While the king conversed in a friendly manner 
with the duchess, the duke was quietly seized, hurried 
away, shipped for Calais, and lodged in the castle there. 
His friends, the Earls of Arundel and Warwick, were taken 
in the same treacherous manner, and confined to their 
castles. A few days after, at Nottingham, they were im- 
peached for high treason. The Earl of Arundel was con- 
demned and beheaded, and the Earl of Warwick was banished. 
Then a writ was sent by a messenger to the Governor of Calais, 
requiring him to send the Duke of Gloucester over to be 
tried. In three days, he returned an answer that he 
could not do that, because the Duke of Gloucester had 
died in prison. The duke was declared a traitor, his 
property jvas confiscated to the king, a real or pre- 
tended confession he had made in prison to one of the 
justices of the common #leas was produced against him, 
and there was an end of the matter. How the unfortunate 
duke died very few cared to know. Whether he really died 
naturally, whether he killed himself, whether by the king's 
order he was strangled, or smothered between two beds 
(as a serving-man of the governor's, named Hall, did after- 
wards declare), cannot be discovered. There is not much 
doubt that he was killed, somehow or other, by his nephew's 
orders. Among the most active nobles in these proceed- 
ings were the king's cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, whom the 
king had made Duke of Hereford to smooth down the old 
family quarrels, and some others : who had in the family 
plotting-times done just such acts themselves as they now 
condemned in the duke. They seem to have been a cor- 
rupt set of men ; but such men were easily found about the 
court in such days. 

The people murmured at all this, and were still very sore 
about the French marriage. The nobles saw how little 
the king cared for law, and how crafty he was, and began 
to be somewhat afraid of themselves. The king's life was 
a life of continued feasting and excess ; his retinue, down 
to the meanest servants, were dressed in the most costly 
manner, and caroused at his tables, it is related, to the 
number of ten thousand every day. He himself, surrounded 
by a body of ten thousand archers, and enriched by a duty 



176 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

on wool, which the Commons had granted him for life, saw no 
danger of ever being otherwise than powerful and absolute, 
and was as* fierce and haughty as a king could be. 

He had two of his old enemies left, in the persons of 
the Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk. / Sparing these no 
more than the others, he tampered with the Duke of 
Hereford until he got him to declare, before the Coun- 
cil, that the Duke of Norfolk had lately held some trea- 
sonable talk with him as he was riding near Brentford ; 
and that he had told him, among other things, that he 
could not believe the king's oath, — which nobody could, I ■ 
should think. For this treachery he obtained a pardon, 
and the Duke of Norfolk was summoned to appear and de- 
fend himself. As he denied the charge, and said his accuser 
was a liar and a traitor, both noblemen, according to the 
manner of those times, were held in custody, and the 
truth was ordered to be decided by wager of battle at Cov- 
entry. This wager of battle meant that whosoever won 
the combat was to be considered in the right : which non- 
sense meant, in effect, that no strong man could ever be 
wrong. A great holiday was made ; a great crowd assem- 
bled, with much parade and show ; and the two combatants 
were about to rush at each other with their lances, when 
the king, sitting in a pavilion to see fair, threw down the 
truncheon he carried in his hand, and forbade the battle. 
The Duke of Hereford was to be banished for ten years, 
and the Duke of Norfolk was to be banished for life. So 
said the king. The Duke of Hereford went to France, and 
went no farther. The Duke of Norfolk made a pilgrimage 
to the Holy Land, and afterwards died at Venice of a 
broken heart. 

Faster and fiercer, after this, the king went on in his 
career. The Duke of Lancaster, who was the father of the 
Duke of Hereford, died soon after the departure of his son ; 
and the king, although he had solemnly granted to that son 
leave to inherit his father's property, if it should come to 
him during his banishment, immediately seized it all, like 
a robber. The judges were so afraid of him, that they dis- 
graced themselves by declaring this theft to be just and 
lawful. His avarice knew no bounds. He outlawed seven- 
teen counties at once, on a frivolous pretence, merely to 
raise money by way of fines for misconduct. In short, he 
did as many dishonest things as he could j and cared so lit- 



RICHARD THE SECOND. 177 

tie for the discontent of his subjects, — though even the 
spaniel favorites began to whisper to him that there was 
such a thing as discontent afloat, — that he took that time, 
of all others, for leaving England, and making an expedi- 
tion against the Irish. - ■ 

He was scarcely' gone, leaving the Duke of York re- 
gent in his absence, when his cousin, Henry of Hereford, 
came over from France to claim the rights of which he had 
been so monstrously deprived. He was immediately joined 
by the two great Earls of Northumberland and Westmore- 
land ; and his uncle, the regent, finding the king's cause 
unpopular, and the disinclination of the army to act against 
Henry very strong, withdrew with the royal forces towards 
Bristol. Henry, at the head of an army, came from Yorkshire 
(where he had landed) to London, and followed him. They 
joined their forces, — how they brought that about is not 
distinctly understood, — and proceeded to Bristol Castle, 
whither three noblemen had taken the young queen. The 
castle surrendering, they presently put those three noblemen 
to death. The regent then remained there, and Henry 
went on to Chester. 

All this time the boisterous weather had prevented the 
img from receiving intelligence of what had occurred. At 
ength it was conveyed to him in Ireland ; and he sent over 
;he Earl of Salisbury, who, landing at Conway, rallied 
;ne Welshmen, and waited for the king a whole fortnight : 
it the end of that time the Welshmen, who were per- 
japs not very warm for him in the beginning, quite cooled 
town, and went home. When the king did land on the 
oast at last, he came with a pretty good power; but his men 
ared nothing for him, and quickly deserted. Supposing 
he Welshmen to be still at Conway, he disguised himself as 
. priest, and made for that place in company with his two 
■rothers and some few of their adherents. But there were 
Welshmen left, — only Salisbury and a hundred soldiers 
n this distress, the king's two brothers, Exeter and Surrey 
tiered to go to Henry to learn what his intentions were, 
urrey, who was true to Kichard, was put into prison. 
-xeter, who was false, took the royal badge, which was a 
art, off his shield, and assumed the rose, the badge of 
lenry. After this it was pretty plain to the king°what 
Lenry s intentions were, without sending anv more mes- 
Jngers to ask. 



178 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The fallen king, thus deserted, hemmed in on all sides 
and pressed with hunger, rode here and rode there, and 
went to this castle and went to that castle, endeavoring to 
obtain some provisions, but could find none. He rode 
wretchedly back to Conway, and there surrendered himself 
to the Earl of Northumberland, who came from Henry, m 
reality to take him prisoner, but in appearance to offer terms, 
and whose men were hidden not far off. By this earl he 
was conducted to the Castle of Flint, where his cousin 
Henry met him, and dropped on his knee as if he were still : 
respectful to his sovereign. 

"Fair cousin of Lancaster," said the king, "you are very 
welcome " (very welcome, no doubt ; but he would have been 
more so in chains, or without a head). 

" My lord," replied Henry, " I am come a little belore my 
time: but, with your good pleasure, I will show you the 
reason Your people complain, with some bitterness, tnat, 
vou have ruled them rigorously for two and twenty years. 
Now, if it please God, I will help you to govern them better 

in future." ' s . . . , ,, 

"Fair cousin," replied the abject king, "since it pleased 
you, it pleaseth me mightily." ; . 

After this, the trumpets sounded, and the king was stuck 
on a wretched horse, and carried prisoner to Chester, where' 
he was made to issue a proclamation calling a parliament. 
From Chester he was taken on towards London. At Lich- 
field he tried to escape by getting out of a window, and K 
ting himself down into a garden : it was all m vain, how- 
ever ; and he was carried on and shut up in the Tower, wher*, 
no one pitied him, and where the whole people, whose pa 
tience he had quite tired out, reproached him witliou 
mercy. Before he got there, it is related that his very dof 
left him, and departed from his side to lick the hand 01 

6 The'day before the Parliament met, a deputation wen, 
to this wretched king, and told him that he had promise 
the Earl of Northumberland at Conway Castle to resi 
the crown. He said he was quite ready to do it, and signe 
a paper in which he renounced his authority, and absolve 
his people from their allegiance to him. He had so litt 
spirit left, that he gave his royal ring ^ his triumphal 
cousin Henry with his own hand, and said, that if he cou. 
have had leave to appoint a successor, that same Henry ws 



RICHARD THE SECOND. 179 

the man of all others whom he would have named. Next 
day the Parliament assembled in Westminster Hall, where 
Henry sat at the side of the throne, which was empty, and 
covered with a cloth of gold. The paper just signed by 
the king was read to the multitude amid shouts of joy, which 
were echoed through all the streets; when some of the 
noise had died away, the king was formally deposed. Then 
Henry arose, and, making the sign of the cross on his fore- 
head and breast, challenged the realm of England as his 
right : the archbishops of Canterbury and York seated him 
on the throne.. 

The multitude shouted again, and the shouts re-echoed 
throughout all the streets. No one remembered now, that 
Richard the Second had ever been the most beautiful, the 
wisest, and the best of princes ; and he now made living (to 
my thinking) a far more sorry spectacle in the Tower of 
London, than Wat Tyler had made, lying dead, among the 
hoofs of the royal horses in Smithfield. 

The poll-tax died with Wat. The smiths to the king 
and royal family could make no chains in which the king- 
could hang the people's recollection of him j so the poll-tax 
was never collected. 



180 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XX. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FOURTH, CALLED BOLINGBROKE. 

During the last reign, the preaching of Wickliffe against 
the pride and cunning of the Pope, and all his men, had 
made a great noise in England. Whether the new king 
wished to be in favor with the priests, or whether he hoped, 
by pretending to be very religious, to cheat Heaven itself 
into the belief that he was not a usurper, I don't know. 
Both suppositions are likely enough. It is certain that he 
began his reign by making a strong show against the 
followers of Wickliffe, who were called Lollards, or heretics, 

— although his father, John of Gaunt, had been of that 
way of thinking, as he himself had been more than 
suspected of being. It is no less certain that he first 
established in England the detestable and atrocious custom, 
brought from abroad, of burning those people as a punish- 
ment for their opinions. It was the importation into Eng- 
land of one of the practices of what was called the Holy 
Inquisition; which was the most imholy and the most 
infamous tribunal that ever disgraced mankind, and made 
men more like demons than followers of our Saviour. 

No real right to the crown, as you know, was in this king. 
Edward Mortimer, the young Earl of March, — who was 
only eight or nine years old, and who was descended from 
the Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of Henry's father, 

— was by succession the real heir to the throne. However, 
the king got his son declared Prince of Wales ; and, obtain- 
ing possession of the young Earl of March and his little 
brother, kept them in confinement '(but not severely) in 
Windsor Castle. He then required the Parliament to 
decide what was to be done with the deposed king, who was 
quiet enough, and who only said that he hoped his cousin 
Henry would be "a good lord" to him. The Parlia- 
ment replied that they would recommend his being kept in 



HENEY THE FOURTH. 181 

some secret place, where the people could not resort, and 
where his friends could be admitted to see him. Henry 
accordingly passed this sentence upon him; and it now 
began to be pretty clear to the nation that Richard the 
Second would not live very long. 

It was a noisy parliament, as it was an unprincipled one ; 
and the lords quarrelled so violently among themselves as 
to which of them had been loyal and which disloyal, and 
which consistent and which inconsistent, that forty gaunt- 
lets are said to have been thrown upon the floor at one time 
as challenges to as many battles ; the truth being, that they 
were all false and base together, and had been at one time 
with the old king, and at another time with the new one, 
and seldom true for any length of time to any one. They 
soon began to plot again. A conspiracy was formed to 
invite the king to a tournament at Oxford, and then to take 
him by surprise and kill him. This murderous enterprise, 
which was agreed upon at secret meetings in the house of 
the Abbot of Westminster, was betrayed by the Earl of 
Eutland, one of the conspirators. The king, instead 
of going to the tournament, or staying at Windsor (where 
the conspirators suddenly went, on finding themselves dis- 
covered, with the hope of seizing him), retired to London, 
proclaimed them all traitors, and advanced upon them with 
a great force. They retired into the west of England, 
proclaiming Eichard kingi but the people rose against 
them, and they were all slam. Their treason hastened the 
death of the deposed monarch. Whether he was killed by 
hired assassins, or whether he was starved to death, or 
whether he refused food on hearing of his brothers being 
killed (who were in that plot), is very doubtful. He met 
his death somehow ; and his body was publicly shown at 
St. Paul Cathedral with only the lower part of the face un- 
covered. I can scarcely doubt that he was killed by the 
king's orders. 

The French wife of the miserable Eichard was nt>w only 
ten years old; and when her father, Charles of France, 
heard of her misfortunes and of her lonely condition in 
England, he went mad, as he had several times done be- 
fore during the last five or six years. The French Dukes 
of Burgundy and Bourbon took up the poor girl's cause, 
without caring much about it, but on the chance of getting 
something out of England. The people of Bordeaux, who 



182 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

• 

had a sort of superstitious attachment to the memory of 
Richard, because he was bom there, swore by the Lord that 
he had been the best man in all his kingdom, — which was 
going rather far, — and promised to do great things against 
the English. Nevertheless, when they came to consider 
that they and the whole people of France were ruined by 
their own nobles, and that the English rule was much the 
better of the two, they cooled down again; and the two 
dukes, although they were very great men, could do nothing 
without them. Then began negotiations between France 
and England for the sending home to Paris of the poor 
little queen, with all her jewels, and her fortune of two hun- 
dred thousand francs in gold. The king was quite willing 
to restore the young lady, and even the jewels ; but he said 
he really could not part with the money. So at last she 
was safely deposited at Paris without her fortune; and then 
the Duke of Burgundy (who was cousin to the French king) 
began to quarrel with the Duke of Orleans (who was 
brother io the French king) about the whole matter; and 
those two dukes made France even more wretched than 
ever. 

As the idea of conquering Scotland was still popular at 
home, the king marched to the River Tyne, and demanded 
homage of the king of that country. This being refused, 
he advanced to Edinburgh, but did little there ; for his 
army being in want of provisions, and the Scotch being 
very careful to hold him in check without giving battle, 
he was obliged to retire. It is to his immortal honor, that 
in this sally he burnt no villages and slaughtered no people, 
but was particularly careful that his army should be merci- 
ful and harmless. It was a great example in those ruth- 
less times. 

A war among the Border people of England and Scot- 
land went on for twelve months ; and then the Earl .of 
Northumberland, the nobleman who had helped Henry to 
the crown, began to rebel against him, probably because 
nothing that Henry could do for him. would satisfy his ex- 
travagant expectations. There was a certain Welsh gentle- 
man, named Owen Glendower, who had been a student 
in one of the inns of court, and had afterwards been in the 
service of the late king, whose Welsh property was taken 
from him by a powerful lord related to the present king, 
who was his neighbor. Appealing for redress, and getting 



HENRY THE FOURTH. 183 

none, he took up arms, was made an outlaw, and declared 
himself sovereign of Wales. He pretended to be a magi- 
cian ; and not only were the Welsh people stupid enough 
to believe him but, even Henry believed him too ; for, mak- 
ing three expeditions into Wales, and being three times 
driven back by the wildness of the country, the bad weather, 
and the skill of Glendower, he thought he was defeated by 
the Welshman's magic arts. However, he took Lord Grey 
and Sir Edmund Mortimer prisoners, and allowed the rela- 
tives of Lord Grey to ransom him, but would not extend 
suah favor to Sir Edmund Mortimer.. Now, Henry Percy, 
called Hotspur, son of the Earl of Northumberland, who 
was married to Mortimer's sister, is supposed to have taken 
offence at this ; and therefore, in conjunction with his fa- 
ther and some others, to have joined Owen Glendower, and 
risen against Henry. It is by no means clear that this was 
the rear" cause of the conspiracy ; but perhaps it was made 
the pretext. It was formed, and was very powerful ; in- 
cluding Scroop, Archbishop of York, and the Earl of 
Douglas, a powerful and brave Scottish nobleman. The 
king was prompt and active, and the two armies met at 
Shrewsbury. 

There were about fourteen thousand men in each. The 
old Earl of Northumberland being sick, the rebel forces 
were led by his son. The king wore plain armor to deceive 
the enemy j and four noblemen, with the same object, wore 
the royal arms. The rebel charge was so furious, that every 
one of those gentlemen was killed, the royal standard was 
beaten down, and the young Prince of Wales was severely 
wounded in the face. But he was one of the bravest and 
best soldiers that ever lived ; and he fought so well, and the 
king's troops were so encouraged by his bold example, that 
they rallied immediately, and cut the enemy's forces all to 
pieces. Hotspur was killed by an arrow in the brain ; and 
the route was so complete, that the whole rebellion was 
struck down by this one blow. The Earl of Northumber- 
land surrendered himself soon after hearing of the death of 
his son, and received a pardon for all his offences. 

There were some lingerings of rebellion yet ; Owen Glen- 
dower being retired to Wales, and a; preposterous story 
being spread among the ignorant people that King Eichard 
was still alive. How they could have believed such non- 
sense it is difficult to imagine ; but they certainly did sup- 



184 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

pose that the court fool of the late king, who was something 
like him, was he himself: so that it seemed as if, after giv- 
ing so much trouble to the country in his life, he was still 
to trouble it after his death. This was not the worst. The 
young Earl of March and his brother were stolen out of 
Windsor. Castle. Being retaken, and being found to have 
been spirited away by one Lady Spencer, she accused her 
own brother, that Earl of Rutland who was in the former 
conspiracy and was now Duke of York, of being in the plot. 
For this he was ruined in fortune, though not put to death ; 
and then another plot arose among the old Earl of North- 
umberland, some other lords, and that same Scroop, Arch- 
bishop of York, who was with the rebels before. These 
conspirators caused a writing to be posted on the church- 
doors, accusing the king of a variety of crimes ; but the 
king being eager and vigilant to oppose them, they were all 
taken, and the archbishop was executed. This was the first 
time that a great churchman had been slain by the law in 
England ; but the king was resolved that it should be done, 
and done it was. 

The next most remarkable event of this time was the 
seizure by Henry of the heir to the Scottish throne, — 
James, a boy of nine years old. He had been put aboard- 
ship by his father, the Scottish King Robert, to save him 
from the designs of his uncle, when, on his way to France, 
he was accidentally taken by some English cruisers. He 
remained a prisoner in England for nineteen years, and be- 
came in his prison a student and a famous poet. 

With the exception of occasional troubles with the Welsh 
and with the French, the rest of King Henry's reign was 
quiet enough. But the king was far from happy, and prob- 
ably was troubled in his conscience by knowing that he 
had usurped the crown, and had occasioned the death of 
his miserable cousin. The Prince of Wales, though brave 
and generous, is said to have been wild and dissipated, and 
even to have drawn his sword on Gascoigne, the Chief 
Justice of the King's Bench, because he was firm in dealing 
impartially with one of his dissolute companions. Upon 
this the chief justice is said to have ordered him imme- 
diately to prison ; the Prince of Wales is said to have sub- 
mitted with a good grace ; and the king is said to have 
exclaimed, "Happy is the monarch who has so just a 
judge, and a son so willing to obey the laws." This is all 



HENRY THE FOURTH. 185 

very doubtful ; and so is another story (of which Skakspeare 
has made beautiful use), that the prince once took the 
crown out of his father's chamber as he was sleeping, and 
tried it on his own head. 

The king's health sank more and more, and he became 
subject to violent eruptions on the face and to bad epileptic 
fits, and his spirits sank every day. At last, as he was 
praying before the shrine of St. Edward, at Westminster 
Abbey, he was seized with a terrible fit, and was carried 
into the abbot's chamber, where he presently died. It had 
been foretold that he would die at Jerusalem, which cer- 
tainly is not, and never was, Westminster. But as the ab- 
bot's room had long been called the Jerusalem Chamber, 
people said it was all the same thing, and Were quite satis- 
fied with the prediction. 

The king died on the 20th of March, 1413, in the forty- 
seventh year of his age, and the fourteenth of his reign. 
He was buried in Canterbury Cathedral. He had been 
twice married, and had, by his first wife, a family of four 
sons and two daughters. Considering his duplicity before 
he came to the throne, his unjust seizure of it, and, above 
all, his making that monstrous law for the burning of what 
the priests called heretics, he was a reasonably good king, 
as kings went. 

16* 



186 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

england under henry the fifth. 
First Part. 

The Prince of Wales began his reign like a generous and 
honest man. He set the young Earl of March free ; he re- 
stored their estates and their honors to the Percy family, 
who had lost them by their rebellion against his father ; he 
ordered the imbecile and unfortunate Richard to be honor- 
ably buried among the kings of England ; and he dismissed 
all his wild companions, with assurances that they should 
not want, if they would resolve to be steady, faithful, and 
true. 

It is much easier to burn men than to burn their opin- 
ions ; and those of the Lollards were spreading every day. 
The Lollards were represented by the priests — probably 
falsely for the most part — to entertain treasonable designs 
against the new king ; and Henry, suffering himse' D to be 
worked upon by these representations, sacrificed his friend 
Sir John Oldcastle, the Lord Cobham, to them, after trying 
in vain to convert him by arguments. . He was declared 
guilty, as the head of the sect, and sentenced to the flames ; 
but he escaped from the Tower before the day of execution 
(postponed for fifty days by the king himself), and sum- 
moned the Lollards to meet him near London on a certain 
day. So the priests told the king, at least. I doubt 
whether there was any conspiracy beyond such as was got 
up by their agents. On the day appointed, instead of five 
and twenty thousand men, under the command of Sir John 
Oldcastle, in the meadows of St. Giles, the king found only 
eighty men, and no Sir John at all. There was in another 
place an addle-headed brewer, who had gold trappings to 
his horses, and a pair of gilt spurs in his breast, expecting 
to be made a knight next day by Sir John, and so to gain 
the right to wear them ; but there was no Sir John, nor 
did anybody give information respecting him, though the 



HENRY THE FIFTH. 187 

king offered great rewards for such intelligence. Thirty of 
these unfortunate Lollards were hanged and drawn imme- 
diately, and were then burnt, gallows and all ; and the va- 
rious prisons in and around London were crammed fall of 
others. Some of these unfortunate men made various con- 
fessions of treasonable designs ; but such confessions were 
easily got, under torture and the fear of fire, and are very 
little to be trusted. To finish the sad story of Sir John Old- 
castle at once, I may mention that he escaped into Wales, 
and remained there safely for four years. When discovered 
by Lord Powis, it is very doubtful if he would have been 
taken alive, — so great was the old soldier's bravery, — if a 
miserable old woman had not come behind him, and broken 
his legs with a stool. He was carried to London in a horse- 
litter, was fastened by an iron chain to a gibbet, and so 
roasted to death. 

To make the state of France as plain as I can in a few 
words, I should tell you that the Duke of Orleans and the 
Duke of Burgundy, commonly called " John without fear,' 7 
had had a grand reconciliation of their quarrel in the last 
reign, and had appeared to be quite in a heavenly state of 
mind. Immediately after which, on a Sunday, in the pub- 
lic streets of Paris, the Duke of Orleans was murdered by 
a party of twenty men, set on by the Duke of Burgundy, 
ac ?ding to his own deliberate confession. The widow of 
Kiilg Richard had been married in France to the eldest son 
of the Duke of Orleans. The poor mad king was quite 
powerless to help her ; and the Duke of Burgundy became 
the real master of France. Isabella dying, her husband 
(Duke of Orleans, since the death of his father) married the 
daughter of the Count of Armagnac, who, being a much 
abler man than his young son-in-law, headed his party ; 
thence called after him Armagnacs. Thus France was now 
in this terrible condition, that it had in it the party of the 
king's son, the Dauphin Louis ; the party of the Duke of 
Burgundy, who was the father of the dauphin's ill-used 
wife ; and the party of the Armagnacs, — all hating 
each other, all fighting together, all composed of the most 
depraved nobles that the earth has ever known, and all 
tearing unhappy France to pieces. 

The late king had watched these dissensions from Eng- 
land, sensible (like the French people) that no enemy of 
France could injure her more than her own nobility. The 



188 A "CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

present king now advanced a claim to the French throne. 
His demand being, of course, refused, he reduced his pro- 
posal to a certain large amount of French territory, and to 
demanding the French Princess Catherine in marriage, 
with a fortune of two millions of golden crowns. He was 
offered less territory, and fewer crowns, and no princess ; 
but he called his ambassadors home, and prepared for war. 
Then he proposed to take the princess with one million of 
crowns. The French court replied that he should have the 
princess with two hundred thousand crowns less ; he said 
this would not do (he had never seen the princess in his 
life), and assembled his army at Southampton. There was 
a short plot at home, just at that time, for deposing him, 
and making the Earl of March king ; but the conspirators 
were all speedily condemned and executed, and the king 
embarked for France. 

It is dreadful to observe how long a bad example will be 
followed ; but it is encouraging to know that a good ex- 
ample is never thrown away. The king's first act, on dis- 
embarking at the mouth of the River Seine, three miles 
from HarfLeur, was to imitate his father, and to proclaim 
his solemn orders that the lives and property of the peace- 
able inhabitants should be respected on pain of death. It 
is agreed by French writers, to his lasting renown, that, 
even while his soldiers were suffering the greatest distress 
from want of food, these commands were rigidly obeyed. 

With an army in all of thirty thousand men, he besieged 
the town of Harfleur both by sea and land for five weeks ; 
at the end of which time the town surrendered, and the in- 
habitants were allowed to depart with only fivepence each, 
and a part of their clothes. All the rest of their posses- 
sions was divided amongst the English army. But that 
army suffered so much, in spite of its successes, from dis- 
ease and privation, that it was already reduced one half. 
Still the king was determined not to retire until he had 
struck a greater blow. Therefore, against the advice of 
all his counsellors, he moved on with his little force towards 
Calais. When he came up to the River Somme he was un- 
able to cross, in consequence of the fort being fortified ; 
and, as the English moved up the left bank of the river 
looking for a crossing, the French, who had broken all the 
bridges, moved up the right bank, watching them, and 
waiting to attack them when they should try to pass it. 



HENRY THE FIFTH. 189 

At last the English found a crossing, and got safely over. 
The French held a council of war at Rouen, resolved to 
give the English battle, and .sent heralds to King Henry 
to know by which road he was going. " By the road that 
will take me straight to Calais ! " said the king, and sent 
them away with a present of a hundred crowns. 

The English moved on until they beheld the French, and 
then the king gave orders to form in line of battle. The 
French not coming on, the army broke up, after remaining 
in battle array till night, and got good rest and refresh- 
ment at a neighboring village. The French were now all 
lying in another village, through which they knew the 
English must pass. They were resolved that the English 
should begin the battle. The English had no means of re- 
treat, if their king had any such intention j and so the two 
armies passed the night close together. 

To understand these armies well, you must bear in mind 
that the immense French army had, among its notable per- 
sons, almost the whole of that wicked nobility whose debauch- 
ery had made France a desert : and so besotted were they by 
pride, and by contempt for the common people, that they 
had scarcely any bowmen (if indeed they had any at all) in 
their whole enormous number, which, compared with the 
English army, was at least as six to one ; for these proud 
fools had said that the bow was not a nt weapon for knightly 
hands, and that France must be defended by gentlemen 
only. We shall see presently what hand the gentlemen 
made of it. 

Now, on the English side, among the little force, there 
was a good proportion of men who were not gentlemen, by 
any means, but who were good stout archers for all that. 
Among them, in the morning, — having slept little at night, 
while the French were carousing and making sure of vic- 
tory, — the king rode, on a gray horse ; wearing on his 
head a helmet of shining steel, surmounted by a crown of 
gold, sparkling with precious stones ; and bearing over his 
armor, embroidered together, the arms of England and the 
arms of France. The archers looked at the shining helmet, 
and the crown of gold, and the sparkling jewels, and ad- 
mired them all ; but what they admired most was the 
king's cheerful face, and his bright blue eye, as he told 
them, that, for himself, he had made up his mind to con- 
quer there or to die there, and that England should never 



190 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

have a ransom to pay for him. There was one brave knight, 
who chanced to say that he wished some of the many gal- 
lant gentlemen and good soldiers, who were then idle at 
home in England, were there to increase their numbers. 
But the king told him, that, for his part, he did not wish 
for one more man. "The fewer we have," said he, "the 
greater will be the honor we shall win ! " His men, being 
now all in good heart, were refreshed with bread and wine, 
and heard prayers, and waited quietly for the French. 
The king waited for the French, because they were drawn 
up thirty deep (the little English force was only three 
deep), on very difficult and heavy ground; and he knew, 
that, when they moved, there must be confusion among 
them. 

As they did not move he sent off two parties, — orle to 
lie concealed in a wood on the left of the French, the 
other to set fire to some houses behind the French after 
the battle should be begun. This was scarcely done, when 
three of the proud French gentlemen, who were to defend 
their country without any help from the base peasants, 
came riding out, calling upon the English to surrender. 
The king warned those gentlemen himself to retire with 
all speed, if they cared for their lives, and ordered the English 
banners to advance. Upon that, Sir Thomas Erpingham, 
a great English general who commanded the archers, 
threw his truncheon into the air joyfully; and all the 
Englishmen, kneeling down upon the ground, and biting 
it as if they took possession of the country, rose up with a 
great shout, and fell upon the French. 

Every archer was furnished with a great stake tipped 
with iron; and his orders were, to thrust this stake into 
the ground, 'to discharge his arrow, and then to fall back 
when the French horsemen came on. As the haughty 
French gentlemen who were to break the English archers, 
and utterly destroy them with their knightly lances, came 
riding up, they were received with such a blinding storm 
of arrows that they broke and turned. Horses and men 
rolled over one another, and the confusion was terrific. 
Those who rallied, and charged the archers, got among the 
stakes on slippery and boggy ground, and were so bewil- 
dered that the English archers — who wore no armor, and 
even took off their leathern coats to be more active — cut 
them to pieces, root and branch. Only three French horse- 



HENRY THE FIFTH. 191 

men got within the stakes, and those were instantly de- 
spatched. All this time the dense French army, being in 
armor, were sinking knee-deep into the mire; while the 
light English archers, half-naked, were as fresh and active 
as if they were fighting on a marble floor. 

But now the second division of the French, coming to 
the relief of the first, closed up in a firm mass ; the English, 
headed by the king, attacked them ; and the deadliest part 
of the battle began. The king's brother, the Duke of 
Clarence, was struck down, and numbers of the French 
surrounded him ; but King Henry, standing over the body, 
fought like a lion until they were beaten off. Presently 
came up a band of eighteen French knights, bearing the 
banner of a certain French lord, who had sworn to kill or 
take the English king. One of them struck him such a 
blow with a battle-axe, that he reeled, and fell upon his 
knees; hut his faithful men, immediately closing round 
him, killed every one of those eighteen knights, and so that 
French lord never kept his oath. 

The French Duke of Alencon, seeing this, made a des- 
perate charge, and cut his way close up to the royal stand- 
ard of England. He beat down the Duke of York, who 
was standing near it; and, when the king came to his 
rescue, struck off a piece of the crown he wore. But he 
never struck another blow in this world ; for, even as he 
was in the act of saying who he was, and, that he surren- 
dered to the king, and even as the king stretched out his 
hand to give him a safe and honorable acceptance of the 
offer, he fell dead, pierced by innumerable wounds. 

The death of this nobleman decided the battle. The 
third division of the French army, which had ftever struck 
a blow yet, and which was, in itself, more than double the 
whole English power, broke and tied. At this time of the 
fight, the English, who as yet had made no prisoners, 
began to take them in immense numbers, and were still 
occupied in doing so, or in killing those who would not 
surrender, when a great noise arose in the rear of the 
French, — their flying banners were seen to stop, — and 
King Henry, supposing a great re-enforcement to have 
arrived, gave orders that all the prisoners should be put to 
death. As soon, however, as it was found that the noise 
was only occasioned by a body of plundering peasants, the 
terrible massacre was stopped. 



192 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Then King Henry called to him the French herald, and 
asked him to whom the victory belonged. 

The herald replied, " To the King of England." 

" We have not made this havoc and slaughter," said the 
king. " It is the wrath of Heaven on the sins of France. 
What is the name of that castle yonder ? " 

The herald answered him, " My lord, it is the Castle of 
Azincourt." 

Said the king, "From henceforth this battle shall be 
known to posterity by the name of the battle of 
Azincourt." 

Our English historians have made it Agincourt; but 
under that name it will ever be famous in English annals. 

The loss upon the French side was enormous. Three 
dukes were killed, two more were taken prisoners ; seven 
counts were killed, three more were taken prisoners ; and 
ten thousand knights and gentlemen were slain upon the 
field. The English loss amounted to sixteen hundred men, 
among whom were the Duke of York and the Earl of 
Suffolk. 

War is a dreadful thing: and it is appalling to know how 
the English were obliged, next morning, to kill those 
prisoners, mortally wounded, who yet writhed in agony 
upon the ground ; how the dead upon the French side were 
stripped by their own countrymen and countrywomen, and 
afterwards buried in great pits; how the dead upon the 
English side were piled up in a great barn, and how their 
bodies and the barn were all burned together ! It is in 
such things, and in many more much too horrible to relate, 
that the real desolation and wickedness of war consists. 
Nothing can make war otherwise than horrible. But the 
dark side of it was little thought of and soon forgotten ; 
and it cast no shade of trouble on the English people, 
except -on those who had lost friends or relations in the 
fight. They welcomed their king home with shouts of re- 
joicing, and plunged into the water to bear him ashore on 
their shoulders, and flocked out in crowds to welcome him in 
every town through which he passed, and hung rich carpets 
and tapestries out of the windows, and strewed the streets 
with flowers, and made the fountains run with wine, as the 
great field of Agincourt had run with blood. 



HENRY THE FIFTH. 193 

Second Part. 

That proud and wicked French nobility who dragged 
their country to destruction, and who were every day and 
every year regarded witli deeper hatred and detestation 
in the hearts of the French people, learned nothing, even 
from the defeat of Agincourt. So far from uniting 
against the common enemy, they became, among them- 
selves, more violent, more bloody, and more false — if that 
were possible — than they had been before. The Count 
of Armagnac persuaded the French king to plunder of 
her treasures Queen Isabella of Bavaria, and to make her 
a prisoner. ' She, who had hitherto been the bitter enemy 
of the Duke of Burgundjr, proposed to join him, in revenge. 
He carried her off to Troyes, where she proclaimed herself 
Regent of France, and made him her lieutenant. The 
Armagnac -party were at that time possessed ' of Paris ; 
but one of the gates of the city being secretly opened on 
a certain night to a party of the duke's men, they got 
into Paris, threw into the prisons all the Armagnacs upon 
whom they could lay their hands, and, a few nights after- 
wards, with the aid of a furious mob of sixty thousand 
people, broke the prisons open, and killed them all. The 
former dauphin was now dead, and the king's third son 
bore the title. Him, in the height of this murderous 
scene, a French knight hurried out of bed, wrapped in 
a sheet, and bore away to Poictiers. So, when the re- 
vengeful Isabella and the Duke of Burgundy entered 
Paris in triumph after the slaughter of their enemies, 
the dauphin was proclaimed at Poictiers as the real re- 
gent. 

King Henry had not been idle since his victory of 
Agincourt, but had repulsed a brave attempt of the French 
to recover Harfleur, had gradually conquered a great 
part of Normandy, and, at this crisis of affairs, took the 
important town of Rouen, after a siege of half a year. 
This great loss so alarmed the French, that the Duke of 
Burgundy proposed that a meeting to treat of peace should 
be held between the French and the English kings in a 
plain by the River Seine. On the appointed day, King 
Henry appeared there, with his two brothers, Clarence 
and Gloucester, and a thousand men. The unfortunate 
French king, being more mad than usual that day, could 

17 



194 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

not come ; but the queen came, and with her the Princess 
Catherine, who was a very lovely creature, and who made 
a real impression on King Henry, now that he saw her 
for the first time. This was the most important circum- 
stance that arose out of the meeting. 

As if it were impossible for a French nobleman of that 
time to be true to his word of honor in any thing, Henry 
discovered that the Duke of Burgundy was, at that very 
moment, in secret treaty with the dauphin ; and he there- 
fore abandoned the negotiation. 

The Duke of Burgundy and the dauphin, each of whom, 
with the best reason, distrusted the other as a noble 
ruffian surrounded by a party of noble ruffians, were rather 
at a loss how to proceed after this ; but at length they 
agreed to meet on a bridge over the River Yonne, where 
it was arranged that there should be two strong gates 
put up, with an empty space between them, and that 
the Duke of Burgundy should come into that space by 
one gate, with ten men only, and that the dauphin should 
come into that space by the other gate, also with ten men, 
and no more. 

So far the dauphin kept his word; but no farther. 
When the Duke of Burgundy was on his knee before 
him, in the act of speaking, one of the dauphin's noble 
ruffians cut the said duke down with a small axe, and 
others speedily finished him. 

It was in vain for the dauphin to pretend that this 
base murder was not done with his consent; it was too 
bad, even for France, and caused a general horror. The 
duke's heir hastened to make a treaty with King Henry, 
and the French queen engaged that her husband should 
consent to it, whatever it was. Henry made peace, on 
condition of receiving the Princess Catherine in marriage, 
and being made regent of France during the rest of the 
king's lifetime, and succeeding to the French crown at 
his death. He was soon married to the beautiful princess, 
and took her proudly home to England, where she was 
crowned with great honor and glory. 

This peace was called the Perpetual Peace : we shall 
soon see how long it lasted. It gave great satisfaction 
to the French people, although they were so poor and 
miserable, that, at the time of the celebration of the 
royal marriage, numbers of them were dying with starva- 



HENRY THE FIFTH. 195 

tion, on the dunghills in the streets of Paris. There 
was some resistance on the part of the dauphin in some 
few parts of France, but King Henry beat it all down. 

And now, with his great possessions in France secured, 
and his beautiful wife to cheer him, and a son born to 
give him greater happiness, all appeared bright before 
him. But in the fulness of his triumph and the height 
:>f his power, death came upon him, and his day was 
lone. When he fell ill at Vincennes, and found that 
be could not recover, he was very calm and quiet, and 
spoke serenely to those who wept around his bed. His 
wife and child, he said, he left to the loving care of 
lis brother, the Duke of Bedford, and his other faith- 
ful nobles. He gave them his advice that England should 
3stablish a friendship with the new Duke of Burgundy, 
md offer him the regency of France ; that it should not 
jet free the ^oyal princes who had been taken at Agincourt ; 
ind that, whatever quarrel might arise with France, Eng- 
and should never make peace without holding Normandy. 
Then he laid down his head, and asked the attendant 
oriests to chant the penitential psalms. Amid which 
solemn sounds, on the 31st of August, 1422, in only the 
:hirty-fourth year of his age and the tenth of his reign, 
!l£mg Henry the Fifth passed away. 

Slowly and mournfully they carried his embalmed body 
j.n a procession of great state to Paris, and thence to Rouen, 
-.vhere his queen was : from whom the sad intelligence of his 
leath was concealed until he had been dead some days. 
Thence, lying on a bed of crimson and gold, with a golden 
;rown upon the head, and a golden ball and sceptre lying 
n the nerveless hands, they carried it to Calais, with such 
i great retinue as seemed to dye the road black. The King 
)f Scotland acted as chief mourner, all the royal household 
bllowed, the knights wore black armor and black plumes 
)f feathers ; crowds of men bore torches, making the night 
is light as day; and the widowed princess followed last of 
ul. At Calais there was a fleet of ships to bring the funeral 
lost to Dover. And so, by way of London Bridge, where 
:he service for the dead was chanted as it passed along, they 
arought the body to Westminster Abbey, and there buried 
a with great respect. 



196 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

england under henry the sixth. 
Part the First. 

It had been the wish of the late king, that while his in- 
fant son, King Henry the Sixth, at this time only nine 
months old, was under age, the Duke of Gloucester should 
be appointed regent. The English Parliament, however, 
preferred to appoint a council of regency, with the Duke of 
Bedford at its head: to be represented, in his absence only, 
by the Duke of Gloucester. The Parliament would seem 
to have been wise in this ; for Gloucester soon showed him- 
self to be ambitious and troublesome, and,, in the gratifica- 
tion of his own personal schemes, gave dangerous offence to 
the Duke of Burgundy, which was with difficulty adjusted. 

As that duke declined the Regency of Prance, it was be- 
stowed by the poor French king upon the Duke of Bedford. 
But the French king dying within two months, the dau- 
phin instantly asserted his claim to the French throne, and 
was actually crowned under the title of Charles the Sev- 
enth. The Duke of Bedford, to be a match for him, en- 
tered into a friendly league with the Dukes of Burgundy 
and Brittany, and gave them his two sisters in marriage. 
War with France was immediately renewed, and the per- 
petual peace came to an untimely end. 

In the first campaign, the English, aided by this alliance, 
were speedily successful. As Scotland, however, had sent 
the French five thousand men, and might send more, or 
attack the North of England while England was busy with 
France, it was considered that it would be a good thing to 
offer the Scottish King James, who had been so long im- 
prisoned, his liberty, on his paying forty thousand pounds 
for his board and lodging during nineteen years, and en- 
gaging to forbid his subjects from serving under the flag of 
France. It is pleasant to know, not only that the amiable 
captive at last regained his freedom upon these term$ but 



HENRY THE SIXTH. 197 

that lie married a noble English lady, with whom he had 
been long in love, and became an excellent king. I am 
afraid we have met with some kings in this history, and 
shall meet with some more, who would have been very much 
the better, and would have left the world much happier, if 
they had been imprisoned nineteen years too. 

In the second campaign, the English gained a consider-, 
able victory at Verneuil, in a battle which was chiefly re- 
markable, otherwise, for their resorting to the odd expedient 
of tying their baggage-horses together by the heads and 
tails, and jumbling them up with the baggage, so as to con- 
vert them into a sort of live fortification, — which was found 
useful to the troops, but which I should think was not agree- 
able to the horses. Eor three years afterwards very little was 
done, owing to both sides being too poor for war, which is 
a very expensive entertainment; but a council was then 
held in Paris, in which it was decided to lay siege to the 
town of Orleans, which was a place of great importance to 
the dauphin's cause. An English army of ten thousand 
men was despatched on this service, under the command of 
the Earl of Salisbury, a general of fame. He being unfor- 
tunately killed early in the siege, the Earl of Suffolk took 
his place ; under whom (re-enforced by Sir John Falstaff, 
who brought up four hundred wagons laden with salt her- 
rings and other provisions for the troops, and, beating off 
the French, who tried to intercept him, came victorious out 
of a hot skirmish, which was afterwards called in jest the 
Battle of the Herrings) the town of Orleans was so com- 
pletely hemmed in, that the besieged proposed to yield it 
up to their countryman, the Duke of Burgundy. The Eng- 
lish general, however, replied that his Englishmen had won 
it, so far, by their blood and valor, and that his English- 
men must have it. There seemed to be no hope for the 
town, or for the dauphin, who was so dismayed that he even 
thought of flying to Scotland or to Spain, when a peasant- 
girl rose up, and changed the whole state of affairs. 

The story of this peasant-girl I have now to tell. 

Part the Second. 

the story of joan of arc. 

In a remote village among some wild hills in the province 
of Lorraine, there lived a countryman whose name was Jao 

17* 



198 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

ques d'Arc. He had a daughter, Joan of Arc, who was 
at this time in her twentieth year. She had heen a solitary 
girl from her childhood; she had often tended sheep and 
cattle for whole days where no human figure was seen or 
human voice heard; and she had often knelt, for hours to- 
gether, in the gloomy, empty little village chapel, looking 
up at the altar and at the dim lamp burning before it, until 
she fancied that she saw shadowy figures standing there, 
and even that she heard them speak to her. The people 
in that part of France were very ignorant and superstitious ; I 
and they had many ghostly tales to tell about what they I 
had dreamed, and what they saw among the lonely hills 
when the clouds and the mists were resting on them. So 
they easily believed that Joan saw strange sights ; and they ! 
whispered among themselves that angels and spirits talked ■ 
to her. 

At last, Joan told her father that she had one day been ! 
surprised by a great unearthly light, and had afterwards 
heard a solemn voice, which said it was St. Michael's voice, 
telling her that she was to go and help the dauphin. Soon 
after this (she said), St. Catherine and St. Margaret had 
appeared to her with sparkling crowns upon their heads, 
and had encouraged her to be virtuous and resolute. These 
visions had returned sometimes, but the voices very often; 
and the voices always said, " Joan, thou art appointed by 
Heaven to go and help the dauphin ! " She almost always 
heard them while the chapel-bells were ringing. 

There is no doubt, now, that Joan believed she saw and 
heard these things. It is very well known that such delu- 
sions are a disease which is not by any means uncommon. 
It is probable enough that there were figures of St. Michael 
and St. Catherine and St. Margaret in the little chapel 
(where they would be very likely to have shining crowns 
upon their heads), and that they first gave Joa,n the idea of 
those three personages. She had long been a moping, 
fanciful girl ; and, though she was a very good girl, I dare- 
say she was a little vain, and wishful for notoriety. 

Her father, something wiser than his neighbors, said, 
"I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy. Thou hadst better have 
a kind husband to take care of thee, girl, and work to em- 
ploy thy mind ! " But Joan told him in reply, that she had 
taken a vow never to have a husband, and that she must 
go, as Heaven directed her, to help the dauphin. 




JOAN OF ARC TF.NDTNCJ HER FT.OCK. 



HENRY THE SIXTH. 199 

It happened, unfortunately for her father's persuasions, 
and most unfortunately for the poor girl too, that a party 
of the dauphin's enemies found their way into the village, 
while Joan's disorder was at this point, and burnt the 
chapel, and drove out the inhabitants. The cruelties she 
saw committed touched Joan's heart, and made her worse. 
She said that the voices and the figures were now contin- 
ually with her; that they told her she was the girl who, 
according to an old prophecy, was to deliver France, and 
she must go and help the dauphin, and must remain with 
him until he should be crowned at Blieims ; and that she 
must travel a long way to a certain lord, named Baudri- 
court, who could, and would, bring her into the dauphin's 
presence. 

As her father still said, "I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy," 
she set off to find out this lord, accompanied by an uncle, a 
poor village wheelright and cartmaker, who believed in the 
reality of her visions. They travelled a long way, and went 
on and on, over a rough country, full of the Duke of Bur- 
gundy's men, and of all kind of robbers and marauders, 
until they came to where this lord was. 

"When his servants told him that there was a poor peasant- 
girl named Joan of Arc, accompanied by nobody but an old 
village wheelright and cartmaker, who wished to see him, 
because she was commanded to help the dauphin and save 
France, Baudricourt burst out a laughing, and bade them 
send the girl away. But he soon heard so much about her 
lingering in the town, and praying in the churches, and see- 
ing visions, and doing harm to no one, that he sent for her 
and questioned heri As she said the same things after she 
had been well sprinkled with holy water £s she had said be- 
fore the sprinkling, Baudricourt began to think there might 
be something in it. At all events, he thought it worth 
while to send her on to the town of Chinon, where the dau- 
phin was. So he bought her a horse, and a sword, and gave 
her two squires to conduct her. As the voices had told 
Joan that she was to wear a man's dress, now she put one 
on, and girded her sword to her side, and bound spurs to her 
heels, and mounted her horse, and rode away with her two 
squires. As to her uncle, the wheelright, he stood staring 
at his niece in wonder until she was out of sight, — as well 
he might, — and then went home again. The best place 
too. 



200 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Joan and her two squires rode on and on, until they came 
to Chinon, where she was, after some doubt, admitted into 
the dauphin's presence. Picking him out immediately 
from all his court, she told him that she came commanded 
by Heaven to subdue his enemies, and conduct him to his 
coronation at Rheims. She also told him (or he pretended 
so afterwards, to make the greater impression upon his sol- 
diers) a number of his secrets known only to himself, and, 
furthermore, she said there was an old, old sword in the Ca- 
thedral of St. Catherine at Eierbois, marked with five old 
crosses on the blade, which St. Catherine had ordered her 
to wear. 

Now, nobody knew any thing about this old, old sword ; 
but when the cathedral came to be examined, which was im- 
mediately done, there, sure enough, the sword was found ! 
The dauphin then required a number of grave priests and 
bishops to give him their opinion whether the girl derived 
her power from good spirits or from evil spirits ; which they 
held prodigiously long debates about, in the course of which 
several learned men fell fast asleep, and snored loudly. At 
last, when one gruff old gentleman had said to Joan, "What 
language do your voices speak ? " and when Joan had re- 
plied to the gruff old gentleman, " A pleasanter language 
than yours," they agreed that it was all correct, and that 
Joan of . Arc was inspired from Heaven. This wonderful 
circumstance put new heart into the dauphin's soldiers when 
they heard of it, and dispirited the English army, who fook 
Joan for a witch. 

So Joan mounted horse again, and again rode on and on, 
until she came to Orleans. But she rode now as never 
peasant-girl had ridden yet. She rode upon a white war- 
horse, in a suit of glittering armor ; with the old, old sword 
from the cathedral, newly burnished, in her belt; with a 
white flag carried before her, upon which were a picture of 
God, and the words Jesus Maria. In this splendid state, 
at the head of a great body of troops escorting provisions 
of all kinds for the starving inhabitants of Orleans, she ap- 
peared before that beleaguered city. 

When the people on the walls beheld her, they cried out, 
" The Maid is come ! the Maid of the prophecy is come 
to deliver us ! " And this, and the sight of the maid fight- 
ing at the head of their men, made the French so bold, and 
made the English so fearful, that the English line of forts was 



HENRY THE SIXTH. 201 

soon broken, the troops and provisions were got into the 
town, and Orleans was saved. 

Joan, henceforth called the Maid of Orleans, remained 
within the walls for a few days, and caused letters to be 
thrown over, ordering Lord Suffolk and his Englishmen to 
depart from before the town according to the will of Heaven. 
As the English general very positively declined to believe 
that Joan knew any thing about the will of Heaven (which 
did not mend the matter with his soldiers ; for they stupidly 
said if she were not inspired she was a witch, and it was of 
no use to fight against a witch), she mounted her white war- 
horse again, and ordered her white banner to advance. 

The besiegers held the bridge, and some strong towers 
upon the bridge ; and here the Maid of Orleans attacked 
them. The fight was fourteen hours long. She planted a 
scaling-ladder with her own hands, and mounted a tower- 
wall, but -was struck by an English arrow in the neck, and 
fell into the trench. She was carried away, and the arrow 
was taken out, during which operation she screamed and 
cried with the pain, as any other girl might have done ; but 
presently she said that the voices were speaking to her, and 
soothing her to rest. After a while she got up, and was 
again foremost in the fight. When the English, who had 
seen her fall and supposed her dead, saw this, they were 
troubled with the strangest fears ; and some of them cried 
out that they beheld St. Michael on a white horse (proba- 
bly Joan herself) fighting for the French. They lost the 
bridge, and lost the towers, and next day set their chain of 
forts on fire, and left the place. 

But as Lord Suffolk himself retired no farther than the 
town of Jargeau, which was only a few miles off, the Maid 
of Orleans besieged him there,- and he was taken prisoner. 
As the white banner scaled the wall, she was struck upon 
the head with a stone, and was again tumbled down into 
the ditch ; but she only cried all the more, as she lay there, 
" On, on, my countrymen ! and fear nothing ; for the Lord 
hath delivered them into our hands ! " After this new suc- 
cess of the Maid's, several other fortresses and places which 
had previously held out against the dauphin were delivered 
up without a battle ; and at Patay she defeated the remain- 
der of the English army, and set up her victorious white 
banner on a field where twelve hundred Englishmen lay 
dead. 



202 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

She now urged the dauphin (who always kept out of the 
way when there was any fighting) to proceed to Rheims, as 
the first part of her mission was accomplished; and to com- 
plete the whole by being crowned there. The dauphin was 
in no particular hurry to do this, as Rheims was a long way 
off, and the English and the Duke of Burgundy were still 
strong in the country through which the road lay. How- 
ever, they set forth, with ten thousand men, and again the 
Maid of Orleans rode on and on, upon her white war-horse, 
and in her shining armor. Whenever they came to a town 
which yielded readily, the soldiers believed in her; but 
whenever they came to a town which gave them any trouble, 
they began to murmur that she was an impostor. The latter 
was particularly the case at Troyes, which finally yielded, 
however, through the persuasion of one Richard, a friar of 
the place. Friar Eichard was in the old doubt about the 
Maid of Orleans, until he had sprinkled her well with holy 
water, and had also well sprinkled the threshold of the gate 
by which she came into the city. Finding that it made no 
change in her or the gate, he said, as the other grave old 
gentlemen had said, that it was all right, and became her 
great ally. 

So at last, by dint of riding on and on, the Maid of Or- 
leans, and the dauphin, and the ten thousand sometimes 
believing and sometimes unbelieving men, came to Rheims. 
And in the great Cathedral of Rheims the dauphin actually 
was crowned Charles the Seventh in a great assembly of 
the people. Then the Maid, who, with her white banner, 
stood beside the king in that hour of his triumph, kneeled 
down upon the pavement at his feet, and said, with tears, 
that what she had been inspired to do was done, and that 
the only recompense she asked for was, that she should now 
have leave to go back to her distant home, and her sturdily 
incredulous father, and her first simple escort, the village 
wheelwright and cartmaker. But the king said, "No! 
and made her and her family as noble as a king could, and 
settled upon her the income of a count. 

Ah ! happy had it been for the Maid of Orleans, it she 
had resumed her rustic dress that day, and had gone home 
to the little chapel and the wild hills, and had forgotten all 
these things, and had been a good man's wife, and had 
heard no stranger voices than the voices of little children ! 

It was not to be ; and she continued helping the king 



HENRY THE SIXTH. 203 

(she did a world for hiru, in alliance with Friar Richard), 
and trying to improve the lives of the coarse soldiers, and 
leading a religions, an unselfish, and a modest life herself, 
beyond any doubt. Still many times she prayed the king to 
let her go home ; and once she even took off her bright armor, 
and hung it up in a church, meaning never to wear it more. 
But the king always won her back again, — while she was 
of any use to him ; and so she went on and on and on, to 
her doom. 

When the Duke of Bedford, who was a very able man, 
began to be active for England, and by bringing the war 
back into. France, and by holding the Duke of Burgundy to 
his faith, to distress and disturb Charles very much, Charles 
sometimes asked the Maid of Orleans what the voices said 
about it ? But the voices had become (very like ordinary 
voices in perplexed times), contradictory and confused, so 
that now they said one thing, and now said another, and 
the Maid lost credit every day. Charles marched on Paris, 
which was opposed to him, and attacked the suburb of 
St. Honore. In this fight, being again struck down into 
the ditch, she was abandoned by the whole army. She lay 
unaided among a heap of dead, and crawled out how she 
could. Then some of her believers went over to an oppo- 
sition maid, Catherine of La B-ochelle, who said she was 
inspired to tell where there were treasures of buried money, 
— though she never did ; and then Joan accidentally 
broke the old, old sword, and others said that her power was 
broken with it. Finally, at the siege of Compiegne, held 
by the Duke of Burgundy, where she did valiant service, 
she was basely left alone in a retreat, though facing about 
and fighting to the last ; and an archer pulled her off her 
horse. 

Oh, the uproar that was made, and the thanksgivings that 
were sung, about the capture of this one poor country-girl ! 
Oh, the way in which she was demanded to be tried for 
sorcery and heresy, and any thing else you like, by the In- 
quisitor-General of France, and by this great man, and by 
that great man, until it is wearisome to think of ! She was 
bought at last by the Bishop of Beauvais for ten thousand 
francs, and was shut up in her narrow prison, — plain Joan 
of Arc again, and Maid of Orleans no more. 

I should never have done if I were to tell you how they had 
Joan out to examine her, and cross-examine her, and re- 



204 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

examine her, and worry her into saying any thing and every 
thing ; and how all sorts of scholars and doctors bestowed 
their ntmost tediousness upon her. Sixteen times she was 
brought out and shut up again, and worried and entrapped and 
argued with, until she was heart-sick of the dreary business. 
On the last oocasion of this kind she was brought into a burial 
place at Rouen, dismally decorated with a scaffold and a 
stake and fagots, and the executioner, and a pulpit with a 
friar therein, and an awful sermon ready. It is very affect- 
ing to know that even at that pass the poor girl honored 
the mean vermin of a king, who had so used her for his 
purposes and so abandoned her ; and that, while she had 
been regardless of reproaches heaped upon herself, she 
spoke out courageously for him. 

It was natural in one so young to hold to life. To save 
her life, she signed a declaration prepared for her, — signed 
it with a cross, for she couldn't write, — that all her visions 
and voices had come from the Devil. Upon her recanting 
the past, and protesting that she would never wear a man's 
dress in future, she was condemned to imprisonment for 
life, " on the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction." 

But on the bread of sorrow and- the water of affliction, 
the visions and the voices soon returned. It was quite 
natural that they should do so ; for that kind of disease is 
much aggravated by fasting, loneliness, and anxiety of 
mind. It was not only got out of Joan that she considered 
herself inspired again, but she was taken in a man's dress, 
which had been left — to entrap her — in her prison, and 
which she put on, in her solitude ; perhaps in remembrance 
of her past glories, perhaps because the imaginary voices 
told her. For this relapse into the sorcery and heresy and 
any thing else you like, she was sentenced to be burnt to 
death. And in the market-place of Rouen, in the hideous 
dress which the monks had invented for such spectacles, 
with priests and bishops sitting in a gallery looking on, — 
though some had the Christian grace to go away, unable 
to endure the infamous scene, — the shrieking girl, last 
seen amidst the smoke and fire holding a crucifix between 
her hands, last heard calling upon Christ, was burnt to 
ashes. They threw her ashes in the River Seine ; but they 
will rise against her murderers on the last day. 

From the moment, of her capture, neither the French 
king nor one single man in all his court raised a finger to 



HENRY THE SIXTH. 205 

save her. It is no defence of them that they may have 
never really believed in her, or that they may have won 
her victories by their skill and bravery. The more they 
pretended to believe in her, the more they had caused her 
to believe in herself; and she had ever been true, to them, 
ever brave, ever nobly devoted. But it is no wonder that 
they who were in all things false to themselves, false to one 
another, false to their country, false to Heaven, false to 
earth, should be monsters of ingratitude and treachery to a 
helpless peasant-girl. 

In the picturesque old town of Rouen, where weeds and 
grass grow high on the cathedral towers, and the venerable 
Norman streets are still warm in the blessed sunlight, 
though the monkish fires that once gleamed horribly upon 
them have long grown cold, there is a statue of Joan of Arc, 
in the scene of her last agony, the square to which she has 
.given its present name. I know some statues of modern 
times, — even in the world's metropolis, I think, — which 
commemorate less constancy, less earnestness, smaller 
claims upon the world's attention, and much greater impos- 
tors. 

. Part the Third. 

Bad deeds seldom prosper, happily for mankind ; and the 
English cause gained no advantage from the cruel death of 
Joan of Arc. For a long time the war went heavily on. 
The Duke of Bedford died, the alliance with the Duke of 
Burgundy was broken, and Lord Talbot became a great 
general on the English side in France. But two of the 
consequences of wars are, famine, because the people 
cannot peacefully cultivate the ground, and pestilence, 
which comes of want, misery, and suffering. Both these 
horrors broke out in both countries, and lasted for two 
wretched years. Then the war went on again, and came 
by slow degrees to be so badly conducted by the English 
government, that, within twenty years from the execution 
of the Maid of Orleans, of all the great French conquests, 
the town of Calais alone remained in English hands. 

While these victories and defeats were taking place in 
the course of time, many strange things happened at home. 
The young king, as he grew up, proved to be very unlike 
his great father, and showed himself a miserable, puny crea- 
ture. There was no harm in him. He had a great aver- 

18 



206 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

sion to shedding blood, which was something ; hut he was a 
weak, silly, helpless young man, and a mere shuttlecock to 
the great lordly battledores about the court. 

Of these battledores, Cardinal Beaufort, a relation of the 
king, and* the Duke of Gloucester, were at first the most 
powerful. The Duke of Gloucester had a wife who was 
nonsensically accused of practising witchcraft to cause the 
king's death and lead to her husband's coming to the 
throne, he being the next heir. She was charged with 
having, by the help of a ridiculous woman named Margery 
(who was called a witch), made a little waxen doll in the 
king's likeness, and put it before a slow fire that it might 
gradually melt away. It was supposed, in such cases, that ; 
the death of the person whom the doll was made to repre- 
sent was sure to happen. Whether the duchess was as ig- 
norant as the rest of them, and really did make such a doll 
with such an intention, I don't know ; but you and I know 
very well that she might have made a thousand dolls, if 
she had been stupid enough, and might have melted them 
all without hurting the king or anybody else. However, 
she was tried for it, and so was old Margery, and so was 
one of the duke's chaplains, who was charged with having 
assisted them. Both he and Margery were put to death ; | 
and the duchess, after being taken on foot, and bearing a > 
lighted candle, three times round the city, as a penance, ' 
was imprisoned for life. The duke himself took all this 
pretty quietly, and made as little stir about the matter as 
if he were rather glad to be rid of the duchess. 

But he was not destined to keep himself out of trouble 
long. The royal shuttlecock being three and twenty, the 
battledores were very anxious to get him married. The 
Duke of Gloucester wanted him to marry a daughter of the 
Count of Armagnac ; but the cardinal and the Earl of Suf- 
folk were all for Margaret, the dauther of the King of 
Sicily, who they knew was a resolute, ambitious woman, and 
would govern the king as she chose. To make friends 
with this lady, the Earl of Suffolk, who went over to ar- 
range the match, consented to accept her for the king's 
wife without any fortune, and even to give up the two most 
valuable possessions England then had in France. So the 
marriage was arranged, on terms very advantageous to 
the lady ; and Lord Suffolk brought her to England, and 
she was married -at Westminster. On what pretence this 



HENRY THE SIXTH. 207 

queen and her party charged the Duke of Gloucester with 
high treason within a couple of years, it is impossible to 
make out, the matter is so confused ; but they pretended 
that the king's life was in danger, and they took the duke 
prisoner. A fortnight afterwards, he was found dead in 
bed (they said) ; and his body was shown to the people, and 
Lord Suffolk came in for the best part of his estates. You 
know by this time how strangely liable state prisoners 
were to sudden death. 

If Cardinal Beaufort had any hand in this matter, it 
did him no good ; for he died within six weeks, thinking it 
very hard and curious — at eighty years old! — that he 
could not live to be pope. 

This was the time when England had completed her loss 
of all her great French conquests. The people charged the 
loss principally upon the Earl of Suffolk, now a duke, who 
had made those easy terms about the royal marriage, and 
who, they believed, had even been bought by France. So 
he was impeached as a traitor, on a great number of charges, 
but chiefly on accusations of having aided the French 
king, and of designing to make his own son king of Eng- 
land. The commons and the people being violent against 
him, the king was made (by his friends) to interpose to 
save him, by banishing him for five years, and proroguing- 
the parliament. The duke had much ado to escape from a 
London mob, two thousand strong, who lay in wait for him 
in St. Giles's Fields ; but he got down to his own estates in 
Suffolk, and sailed away from Ipswich. Sailing across the 
channel, he sent into Calais to know if he might land 
there ; but they kept Ms boat and men in the harbor, until 
an English ship, carrying a hundred and fifty men, and 
called " Nicholas of the Tower," came alongside his little ves- 
sel, and ordered him on board. " Welcome, traitor, as men 
say," was the captain's grim and not very respectful saluta- 
tion. He was kept on board, a prisoner, for eight and forty 
hours, and then a small boat appeared rowing toward the 
ship. As this boat came nearer, it was seen to have in it 
a block, a rusty sword, and an executioner in a black mask. 
The duke was handed down into it, and there his head was 
cut off with six strokes of the rusty sword. Then the little 
boat rowed away to Dover Beach, w T here the body was cast 
out and left until the duchess claimed it. . By whom, high 
in authority, this murder was committed, has never ap- 
peared. No one was ever punished for it. 

( 



208 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

There now arose in Kent an Irishman who gave himself 
the name of Mortimer, but whose real name was Jack 
Cade. Jack, in imitation of Wat Tjder, though he was a 
very different and inferior sort of man, addressed the Kent- 
ish men upon their wrongs, occasioned by the bad govern- 
ment of England, among so many battledores and such a 
poor shuttlecock ; and the Kentish men rose up to the num- 
ber of twenty thousand. Their place of assembly was 
Blackheath, where, headed by Jack, they put forth two 
papers, which they called " The Complaint of the Commons 
of Kent," and " The Requests of the Captain of the Great 
Assembly in Kent." They then retired to Sevenoaks. The 
royal army coming up with them here, they beat it, and 
killed their general. Then Jack dressed himself in the 
dead general's armor, and led his men to London. 

Jack passed into the city from South wark, over the bridge, 
and entered it in triumph, giving the strictest orders to his 
men not to plunder. Having made a show of his forces 
there while the citizens looked on quietly, he went back 
into Southwark in good order, and passed the night. Next 
day he came back again, having got hold in the mean time 
of Lord Say, an unpopular nobleman. Says Jack to the 
lord mayor and judges, " Will you be so good as to make 
a tribunal in Guildhall, and try me this nobleman ? " The 
court being hastily made, he was found guilty ; and Jack 
and his men cut his head off on Cornhill. They also cut 
off the head of his son-in-law, and then went back in good 
order to Southwark again. 

But although the citizens could bear the beheading of an 
unpopular lord, they could not bear to have their houses 
pillaged. And it did so happen, that Jack, after dinner, — 
perhaps he had drunk a little too much, — began to plunder 
the house were he lodged ; upon which, of course, his men 
began to imitate him. Wherefore the Londoners took 
council with Lord Scales, who had a thousand soldiers in 
the Tower, and defended London Bridge, and kept Jack 
and his people out. This advantage gained, it was resolved 
by divers great men to divide Jack's army in the old way, 
by making a great many promises, on behalf of the state, 
that were never intended to be performed. This did divide 
them: some of Jack's men saying that they ought to take 
the conditions which were offered, and others saying that 
they ought not, for they were only a snare j some going 



HENRY THE SIXTH. 209 

home at once ; others staying where they were ; and all 
doubting and quarrelling among themselves. 

Jack, who was in two minds about fighting or accepting 
a pardon, and who indeed did both, saw at last that there 
was nothing to expect from his men, and that it was very 
likely some of them would deliver him up, and get a reward 
of a thousand marks, which was offered for his apprehen- 
sion. So, after they had travelled and quarrelled all the 
way from Southwark to Blackheath, and from Blackheath 
to Rochester, he mounted a good horse, and galloped away 
into Sussex. But there galloped after him, on a better 
horse, one Alexander Iden, who came up with him, had a 
hard fight with him, and killed him. Jack's head was set 
aloft on London Bridge, with the face looking towards 
Blackheath, where he had raised his flag; and Alexander 
Iden got the thousand marks. 

It is supposed by some, that; the Duke of York, who had 
been removed from a high post abroad through the queen's 
influence, and sent out of the way to govern Ireland, was at 
the bottom of this rising of Jack and his men, because 
he wanted to trouble the government. He claimed (though 
not yet publicly) to have a better right to the throne than 
Henry of Lancaster, as one of the family of the Earl of 
March, whom Henry the Fourth had set aside. Touching 
this claim, which, being through female relationship, was 
not according to the usual descent, it is enough to say that 
Henry the Fourth was Jbhe free choice of the people and 
the parliament, and that his family had now reigned undis- 
puted for sixty years. The memory of Henry the Fifth 
was so famous, and the English people loved it so much, 
that the Duke of York's claim would, perhaps, never have 
been thought of (it would have been so hopeless) but for the 
unfortunate circumstance of the present king's being by this 
time quite an idiot, and the country very ill-governed. 
These two circumstances gave the Duke of York a power 
he could not otherwise have had. 

Whether the duke knew any thing of Jack Cade, or not, 
he came over from Ireland while Jack's head was on Lon- 
don Bridge ; being secretly advised that the queen was set- 
ting up his enemy, the Duke of Somerset, against him. 
He went to Westminster at the head of four thousand men, 
and on his knees before the king represented to him the 
bad state of the country, and petitioned him to summon a 

18* 



210 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

parliament to consider it. This the king promised. When 
the parliament was summoned, the Duke of York accused the 
Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of Somerset accused 
the Duke of York ; and, both in and out of parliament, the 
followers of each party were full of violence and hatred 
towards the other. At length, the Duke of York put him- 
self at the head of a large force of his tenants, and, in 
arms, demanded the reformation of the government. Being 
shut out of London, he encamped at Dartford, and the 
royal army encamped at Blackheath. According as either 
side triumphed, the Duke of York was arrested, or the Duke | 
of Somerset was arrested. The trouble ended, for the mo- 
ment, in the Duke of York renewing his oath of allegiance, ; 
and going in peace to one of his own castles. 

Half a year afterwards the queen gave birth to a son, 
who was very ill received by the people, and not believed ; 
to be the son of the king, it shows the Duke of York to 
have been a moderate man, unwilling to involve England 
in new troubles, that he did not take advantage of the 
general discontent at this time, but really acted for the ' 
public good. He was made a member of the cabinet ; and 
the king being now so much worse that he could not be 
carried about and shown to the people with any decency, ; 
the duke was made Lord Protector of the kingdom, until 
the king should recover, or the prince should come of age. 
At the same time the Duke of Somerset was committed to 
the Tower. So now the Duke of -Somerset was down, and 
the Duke of York was up. By the end of the year, how- 
ever, the king recovered his memory and some spark of 
sense ; upon which the queen used her power, which re- 
covered with him, to get the Protector disgraced, and her 
favorite released. So now the Duke of York was down, ! 
and the Duke of Somerset was up. 

These ducal ups and downs gradually separated the whole 
nation into the two parties of York and Lancaster, and led 
to those terrible civil wars long known as the Wars of the 
Red and White Roses, because the red rose was the badge 
of the House of Lancaster, and the white rose was the 
badge of the House of York. 

The Duke of York, joined by some other powerful noble- 
men of the White Rose party, and leading a small army, 
met the king with another small army at St. Alban's, and 
demanded that the Duke of Somerset should be given up. 



HENRY THE SIXTH. . 211 

The poor king, being made to say in answer that he would 
sooner die, was instantly attacked. The Duke of Somerset 
was killed ; and the king himself was wounded in the neck, 
and took refuge in the house of a poor tanner. Whereupon 
the Duke of York went to him, led him with great sub- 
mission to the abbey, and said he was very sorry for what 
had happened. Having now the king in his possession, he 
got a parliament summoned, and himself once more made 
Protector, but only for a few months ; for, on the king get- 
ting a little better again, the queen and her party got him 
into their possession, and disgraced the duke once more. 
So now the Duke of York was down again. 

Some of the best men in power, seeing the danger of 
these constant changes, tried even then to prevent the Red 
and the White Rose Wars. They brought about a great 
council in London between the two parties. The White 
Roses assembled in Blackfriars, the Red Roses in White- 
friars ; and some good priests communicated between them, 
and made the proceedings known at evening to the king 
and the judges. They ended in a peaceful agreement that 
there should be no more quarrelling ; and there was a great 
royal procession to St. Paul's, in which the queen walked 
arm in arm with her old enemy, the Duke of York, to show 
the people how comfortable they all were. This state of 
peace lasted half a year, when a dispute between the Earl 
of Warwick (one of the duke's powerful friends) and some 
of the king's servants at court led to an attack upon that 
earl, — who was a White Rose, — and to a sudden breaking- 
out of all old animosities. So here were greater ups and 
downs than ever. 

There were even greater ups and downs than these soon 
after. After various battles, the Duke of York fled to Ire- 
land, and his son, the Earl of March, to Calais, with their 
friends, the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick ; and a parlia- 
ment was held declaring them all traitors. Little the worse 
for this, the Earl of Warwick presently came back, landed 
in Kent, was joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury and 
other powerful noblemen and gentlemen, engaged the king's 
forces at Northampton, signally defeated them, and took the 
king himself prisoner, who was found in his tent. War- 
wick would have been glad, I daresay, to have taken the 
queen and prince too ; but they escaped into Wales, and 
thence into Scotland. 



212 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The king was carried by the victorious force straight to 
London, and made to call a new parliament, which im- 
mediately declared that the Duke of York and those other 
noblemen were not traitors, but excellent subjects. Then 
back comes the duke from Ireland at the head of five hun- 
dred horsemen, rides from London to Westminster, and 
enters the House of Lords. There he laid his hand upon 
the cloth of gold which covered the empty throne, as if he 
had half a mind to sit down in it ; but he did not. On 
the Archbishop of Canterbury asking him if he would visit 
the king, who was in his palace close by, he replied, " I 
know no one in this country, my lord, who ought not to 
visit me" None of the lords present spoke a single word ; 
so the duke went out as he had come in, established him- 
self royally in the king's palace, and, six days afterwards, 
sent in to the lords a formal statement of his claim to the 
throne. The lords went to the king on this momentous 
subject ; and after a great deal of discussion, in which the 
judges and the other law-officers were afraid to give an 
opinion on either side, the question was compromised. It 
was agreed that the present king should retain the crown 
for his life, and that it should then pass to the Duke of 
York and his heirs. 

But ' the resolute queen, determined on asserting her 
son's right, would hear of no such thing. She came from 
Scotland to the north of England, where several powerful 
lords armed in her cause. The Duke of York, for his 
part, set off with some five thousand men, a little time 
before Christmas Day, 1460, to give her battle. He 
lodged at Sandal Castle, near Wakefield ; and the Red 
Rose defied him to come out on Wakefield Green, and 
fight them then and there. His generals said he had 
best wait until his gallant son, the Earl of March, came up 
with his power ; but he was determined to accept the chal- 
lenge. He did so in an evil hour. He was hotly pressed 
on all sides, two thousand of his men lay dead on Wake- 
field Green, and he himself was taken prisoner. They set 
him down in mock state on an ant-hill, and twisted 
grass about his head, and pretended to pay court to him on 
their knees, saying, " King ! without a kingdom, and 
Prince! without a people, we hope your gracious majesty is 
very well and happy." They did worse than this : they 
cut his head off, and handed it on a pole to the queen, who 



HENRY THE SIXTH. 213 

laughed with delight when she saw it (you recollect their 
walking so religiously and comfortably to St. Paul's ! ), and 
had it fixed, with a paper crown upon its head, on the walls 
of York. The Earl of Salisbury lost his head too ; and 
the Duke of York's second son, a handsome boy, who was 
flying with his tutor over Wakefield Bridge, was stabbed 
in the heart by a murderous lord, — Lord Clifford by name, 
r*- whose father had been killed by the White Roses in the 
fight at St. Alban's. There was awful sacrifice of life in 
this battle ; for no quarter was given, and the queen was 
wild for revenge. When men unnaturally fight against 
their own countrymen, they are always observed to be more 
unnaturally cruel and filled with rage than they are against 
any other enemy. 

But Lord Clifford had stabbed the second son of the 
Duke of York, not the first. The eldest son, Edward, 
Earl of March, was at Gloucester ; and, vowing vengeance 
for the death of his father, his brother, and their faithful 
friends, he began to march against the queen. He had to 
turn and fight a great body of Welsh and Irish first, who 
worried his advance. These he defeated in a great fight at 
Mortimer's Cross, near Hereford, where he beheaded a 
number of the Red Roses taken in battle, in retaliation for 
the beheading of the White Roses at Wakefield. The 
queen had the next turn of beheading. Having moved to- 
wards London, and falling in, between St. Alban's and 
Barnet, with the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Nor- 
folk, White Roses both, who were there with an army to 
oppose her, and had got the king with them, she defeated 
them with great loss, and struck off the heads of two pris- 
oners of note, who were in the king's tent with him, and to 
whom the king had promised his protection. Her triumph, 
however, was very short. She had no treasure, and her 
army subsisted by plunder. This caused them to be hated 
and dreaded by the people, and particularly by the London 
people, who were wealthy. As soon as the Londoners 
heard that Edward, Earl of March, united with the Earl of 
Warwick, was advancing towards the city, they refused to 
send the queen supplies, and made a great rejoicing. 

The queen and her men retreated with all speed ; and Ed- 
ward and Warwick came on, greeted with loud acclama- 
tions on every side. The courage, beauty, and virtues of 
young Edward could not be sufficiently praised by the 



214 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

whole people. He rode into London like a conqueror, and 
met with an enthusiastic welcome. A few days afterwards, 
Lord Falconbridge and the Bishop of Exeter assembled the 
citizens in St. John's Field, Clerkenwell, and asked them 
if they would have Henry of Lancaster for their king? 
To this they all roared, " No, no, no ! " and " King Ed- 
ward ! King Edward ! " Then, said those noblemen, would 
they love and serve young Edward? To this they all 
cried, " Yes, yes ! " and threw up their caps, and clapped 
their hands, and cheered tremendously. 

Therefore it was declared, that, by joining the queen, and 
not protecting those two prisoners of note, Henry of Lan- 
caster had forfeited the crown ; and Edward of York was 
proclaimed king. He made a great speech to the applaud- 
ing people at Westminster, and sat down as sovereign of 
England on that throne, on the golden covering of which 
his father — worthy of a better fate than the bloody axe 
which cut the thread of so many lives in England, through 
so many years — had laid his hand. 



EDWAKD THE FOURTH. 215 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FOURTH. 

King Edward the Fourth was not quite twenty-one 
years of age when he took that unquiet seat upon the throne 
of England. The Lancaster party, the Red Roses, were 
then assembling in great numbers near York, and it was 
necessary to give them batfte instantly. But the stout Earl 
of Warwick, leading for the young king, and the young king 
himself closely following him, and the English people crowd- 
ing round the royal standard, the White and the Red Roses 
met, on a wild March day, when the snow was falling heavily, 
at Towton ; and there such a furious battle raged between 
them, that the total loss amounted to forty thousand men, — 
all Englishmen, fighting, upon English ground, against one 
another. The young king gained the day, took down the 
heads of his father and brother from the walls of York, and 
put up the heads of some of the most famous noblemen en- 
gaged in the battle on the other side. Then he went to 
London, and was crowned with great splendor. 

A new parliament met. No fewer than oue hundred and 
fifty of the principal noblemen and gentlemen on the Lan- 
caster side were declared traitors ; and the king, who had 
very little humanity, though he was handsome in person 
and agreeable in manners, resolved to do all he could to 
pluck up the Red Rose, root and branch. 

Queen Margaret, however, was still active for her young 
son. She obtained help from Scotland and from Normandy, 
and took several important English castles. But Warwick 
soon retook them ; the queen lost all her treasure on board 
ship in a great storm ; and both she and her son suffered 
great misfortunes. Once, in the winter weather, as they 
were riding through a forest, they were attacked and plun- 
dered by a party of robbers ; and when they had escaped 
from these men, and were passing alone and on foot through 



216 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

a thick, dark part of the wood, they came, all at once, upon 
another robber. So the queen, with a stout heart, took the 
little prince by the hand, and going straight up to that rob- 
ber, said to him, " My friend, this is the young son of your 
lawful king! I confide him to your care." The robber was 
surprised, but took the boy in his arms, and faithfully re- 
stored him and his mother to their friends. In the end, the 
queen's soldiers being beaten and dispersed, she went abroad 
again, and kept quiet for the present. 

Now, all this time, the deposed King Henry was con- 
cealed by a Welsh knight, who kept him close in his castle. 
But next year the Lancaster party, recovering their spirits, 
raised a large body of men, and called him out of his retire- 
ment to put him at their head. They were joined by some 
powerful noblemen who had sworn fidelity to the new king, 
but who were ready, as usual, to break their oaths whenever 
they thought there was any thing to be got by it. One of 
the worst things in the history of the war of the Bed and 
White Koses is the ease with which these noblemen, who 
should have set an example of honor to the people, left 
either side as they took slight offence, or were disappointed 
in their greedy expectations, and joined the other. Well, 
Warwick's brother soon beat the Lancastrians ; and the false 
noblemen being taken, were beheaded without a moment's 
loss of time. The deposed king had a narrow escape : three 
of his servants were taken ; and one of them bore his cap of 
estate, which was set with pearls, and embroidered with two 
golden crowns. However, the head to which the cap be- 
longed got safely into Lancashire, and lay pretty quietly 
there (the people in the secret being very true) for more 
than a year. At length an old monk gave such intelligence 
as led to Henry's being taken while he was sitting at din- 
der in a place called Waddington Hall. He was imme- 
diately sent to London, and met at Islington by the Earl 
of Warwick, by whose directions he was put upon a horse, 
with his legs tied under it, and paraded three times round 
the pillory. Then he was carried off to the Tower, where 
they treated him well enough. 

The White E-ose being so triumphant, the young king 
abandoned himself entirely to pleasure, and led a jovial life. 
But thorns were springing up under his bed of roses, as 
he soon found out ; for having been privately married to 
Elizabeth Woodville, a young widow lady, very beauti- 



EDWARD THE FOURTH. 217 

ful and very captivating, and at last resolving to make his 
secret known and to declare her his queen, he gave some 
offence to the Earl of Warwick, who was usually called the 
Kingmaker, because of his power and influence, and be- 
cause of his having lent such great help to placing Edward 
on the throne. This offence was not lessened by the 
jealousy with which the Nevil family (the Earl of War- 
wick's) regarded the promotion of the Woodville family. 
For the young queen was so bent on providing for her rela- 
tions, that she made her father an earl and a great officer of 
state, married her five sisters to young noblemen of the 
highest rank, and provided for her younger brother, a young 
man of twenty, by marrying him to an immensely rich old 
duchess of eighty. The Earl of Warwick took all this 
pretty graciously for a man of his proud temper, until the 
question arose to whom the king's sister, Margaret, should 
be married. The Earl of Warwick said, " To one of the 
French king's sons," and was allowed to go over to the 
French king to make friendly proposals for that purpose, and 
to hold all manner of friendly interviews with him. But, 
while he was so engaged, the Woodville party married the 
young lady to the Duke of Burgundy. Upon this he came 
'jack in great rage and scorn, and shut himself up discon- 
tented in his castle at Middleham. 

A reconciliation, though not a very sincere one, was 
matched up between the Earl pf Warwick and the king, and 
asted until the earl married his daughter, against the king's 
vishes, to the Duke of Clarence. While the marriage was 
)eing celebrated at Calais, the people in the north of Eng- 
and, where the influence of the Nevil family was strongest, 
jroke out into rebellion ; their complaint was, that England 
vas oppressed and plundered by the Woodville family, whom 
liey demanded to have removed from power. As they were 
joined by great numbers of people, and as tkey openly de- 
lared that they were supported by the Earl of Warwick, 
he king did not know what to do. At last, as he wrote to 
he earl beseeching his aid, he and his new son-in-law came 
ver to England, and began to arrange the business by 
hutting the king up in Middleham Castle in the safe keep- 
jag of the Archbishop of York : so England was not only 
a the strange position of having two kings at once, but 
hey were both prisoners at the same time. 

Even as yet, however, the Kingmaker was so far true to 

19 



218 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the king, that he dispersed a new rising of the Lancastrians 
took their leader prisoner, and brought him to the king, wh 
ordered him to be immediately executed. He presently £ 
lowed the king to return to London, and there innumerabl 
pledges of forgiveness and friendship were exchanged btj 
tween them, and between the Nevils and the Woodvilles 
the king's eldest daughter was promised in marriage to th: 
heir of the Nevil family; and more friendly oaths wer 
sworn, and more friendly promises made, than this boo| 
would hold. 

They lasted about three months. At the end of that tim<« 
the Archbishop of York made a feast for the king, the Earl o 
Warwick, and the Duke of Clarence, at his house, the Moo:| 
in Hertfordshire. The king was washing his hands befoii 
supper, when some one whispered him that a body of a hut! 
dred men were lying in ambush outside the house. Whetkc; 
this were true or untrue, the king took fright, mounted hil 
horse, and rode through the dark night to Windsor C astir 
Another reconciliation was patched up between him an 1 
the Kingmaker ; but it was a short one, and it was the las | 
A new rising took place in Lincolnshire, and the kin; 
marched to repress it. Having done so, he proclaimed ths; 
both the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence wer 
traitors, who had secretly assisted it, and who had bee I 
prepared publicly to join it on the following day. In thes! 
dangerous circumstances, they both took ship and saile; 
away to the French court. 

And here a meeting took place between the Earl of Wail 
wick and his old enemy, the Dowager Queen Margarej 
through whom his father had had his head struck off, an 
to whom he had been a bitter foe. But now, when he sai 
that he had done with the ungrateful and perfidious Ec 
ward of York, and that henceforth he devoted himself t 
the restoration* of the House of Lancaster, either in tb 
person of her husband or of her little son, she embraced hiij 
as if he had ever been her dearest friend. She did moi 
than that ; she married her son to his second daughter, tl) 
Lady Anne. However agreeable this marriage was to th 
new friends, it was very disagreeable to the Duke of Clarenc 
who perceived that his father-in-law, the Kingmake 
would never make him king now. So, being but a weal 
minded young traitor, possessed of very little worth or senft 
he readily listened to an artful court-lady sent over for tl 



EDWARD THE FOURTH. 219 

urpose, and promised to turn traitor once more, and go 
ver to his brother, King Edward, when a fitting opportu- 
nity should come. 

The Earl of Warwick, knowing nothing of this, soon re- 
eemed his promise to the Dowager Queen Margaret, by 
lvading England, and landing at Plymouth, where he in- 
;antly proclaimed King Henry, and summoned all Eng- 
shmen between the ages of sixteen and sixty to join his 
aimer. Then, with his army increasing as he marched 
long, he went northward, and came so near King Ed- 
ward, who was in that part of the country, that Edward 
ad to ride hard for it to the coast of Norfolk, and thence 
i> get away, in such ships as he could find, to Holland, 
thereupon the triumphant Kingmaker and his false son- 
i-law, the Duke of Clarence, went to London, took the 
id king out of the Tower, and walked him in a great pro- 
fession to St? Paul's Cathedral with the crown upon his 
;ead. This did not improve the temper of the Duke of 
[larence, who saw himself further off from being king than 
/er ; but he kept his secret, and said nothing. The Ne- 
il family were restored to all their honors and glories, and 
ie Woodvilles and the rest were disgraced. The King- 
maker, less sanguinary than the king, shed no blood except 
lat of the Earl of Worcester, who had been so cruel to 
ie people as to have gained the title of the Butcher, 
dm they caught hidden in a tree, and him they tried and 
xecuted. No other death stained the Kingmaker's tri- 
nph. 

To dispute this triumph, back came King Edward again, 
3xt year, landing at Ravenspur, coming on to York, 
iusing all his men to cry, " Long live King Henry ! " and 
rearing on the altar, without a blush, that he came to lay 
) claim to the crown. Now was the time for the Duke 

Clarence, who ordered his men to assume the White 
ose, and declare for his brother. The Marquis of Mon- 
'.gue, though the Earl of Warwick's brother, also declining 
' fight King Edward, he went on successfully to London, 
here the Archbishop of York let him into the city, and 
here the people made great demonstrations in his favor, 
or this the/ had four reasons. Firstly, there were great 
imbers of the king's adherents hiding in the city and 
;ady to break out ; secondly, the king owed them a great 
-al of money, which they could never hope to get if he 



220 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

were unsuccessful ; thirdly, there was a young prince to iij 
herit the crown ; and fourthly, the king was gay and hand 
some, and more popular than a better man might have beei 
with the city ladies. After a stay of only two days with the* 
•worthy supporters, the king marched out to Barnet Con' 
mon to give the Earl of Warwick battle. And now it ws, 
to be seen, for the last time, whether the king or the Kin^' 
maker was to carry the day. 

While the battle was yet pending, the faint-hearted Dul 
of Clarence began to repent, and sent over secret message I 
to his father-in-law, offering his services in mediation wit ! 
the king. But the Earl of Warwick disdainfully rejectej 
them, and replied that Clarence was false and perjured, an.) 
that he would settle the quarrel by the sword. The battlj 
began at four o'clock in the morning, and lasted until ten! 
and during the greater part of the time it was fought in 
thick mist, absurdly supposed to be raised by a magiciai! 
The loss of life was very great, for the hatred was stronj 
on both sides. The Kingmaker was defeated, and th| 
king triumphed. Both the Earl of Warwick and h:j 
brother were slain; and their bodies lay in St. Paul's fc 
some days, as a spectacle to the people. 

Margaret's spirit was not broken even by this gres 
blow. Within five days she was in arms again, and raise; 
her standard in Bath, whence she set off with her army i\ 
try and join Lord Pembroke, who had a force in Walei; 
But the king coming up with her outside the town o:| 
Tewkesbury, and ordering his brother, the Duke oj 
Gloucester, who was a brave soldier, to attack her meal 
she sustained an entire defeat, and was taken prisoner, t(; 
gether with her son, now only eighteen years of age. Th 
conduct of the king to this poor youth was worthy of hi 
cruel character. He ordered him to be led into his ten 
" And what," said he, " brought you to England ? " — " 
came to England," replied the prisoner, with a spirit whic 1 
a man of spirit might have admired in a captive, "to re 
cover my father's kingdom, which descended to him as hi, 
right, and from him descends to me as mine." The kin£ 
drawing off his iron gauntlet, struck him with it in tb 
face ; and the Duke of Clarence and some other lords, wh 
were there, drew their noble swords and killed him. 

His mother survived him, a prisoner, for five years; afte 
her ransom by the king of France, she survived for si. 



EDWARD THE FOURTH. 221 

>ars more. Within three weeks of this murder, Henry 
ed one of those convenient sudden deaths which were so 
immon in the Tower; in plainer words, he was murdered 
i the king's order. m "■ ; 

Having no particular excitement on his hands alter tins 
reat defeat of the Lancaster party, and heing perhaps de- 
rous to get rid of some of his fat (for he was now getting 
:,o corpulent to be handsome), the king thought of mak- 
ig war on France. As he wanted more money for this 
toose than the Parliament could give him, though they 
iere usually ready enough for war, he invented a new way 
\ raising it, by sending for the principal citizens of Lon- 
] m, and telling them, with a grave face, that he was very 
mch in want of cash, and would take it very kind in them 
f they would lend him some. It being impossible for 
aem safely to refuse, they complied ; and the moneys thus 
irced from them were called, — no doubt to the great 
Uusement of the king and the court, —as if they were 
!«ee gifts, " benevolences." What with grants from Par- 
ament, and what with benevolences, the king raised an 
rmy, and passed over to Calais. As nobody wanted war, 
Hlrever, the French king made proposals of peace, which ' 
rere accepted ; and a truce was concluded for seven long 
ears. The proceedings between the Kings of France and 
"ngland on this occasion were very friendly, very splendid, 
|nd very distrustful. They finished with a meeting between 
|be two kings, on a temporary bridge over the River 
omme, where they embraced through two holes in a strong 
Vooden-grating, like a lion's cage, and made several bows 
ad fine speeches to one another. 

It was time now that the Duke of Clarence should be 
'unished for his treacheries ; and Fate had his punishment 
h store. He was, probably, not trusted by the king (for 
/ho could trust him who knew him?) ; and he had certainly a 
Powerful opponent in his brother Richard, Duke of Glouces- 
er, who, being avaricious and ambitious, wanted to marry 
hat widowed daughter of the Earl of Warwick's who had 
•een espoused to the deceased young prince at Calais. 
Clarence, who wanted all the family wealth for himself, 
ecreted this lady, whom Richard found disguised as a ser- 
vant in the City of London, and whom he married ; arbi- 
rators appointed by the king then divided the property 
between the brothers. This led to ill-will and mistrust 

19* 



222 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

between them. Clarence's wife dying, and he wishing t( 
make another marriage which was obnoxious to the king 
his ruin was hurried by that means too. At first tht 
court struck at his retainers and dependents, and aocusec 
some of them of magic and witchcraft, and similar non 
sense. Successful against this small game, it then mountec 
to the duke himself, who was impeached by his brother 
the king, in person, on a variety of such charges. He was! 
found guilty, and sentenced to be publicly executed 
He never was publicly executed ; but he met his death some- 
how in the Tower, and, no doubt, through some agency of 
the king or his brother Gloucester, or both. It was sup- 
posed at the time that he was told to choose the manneii 
of his death, and that he chose to be drowned in a butt of \ 
Malmsey wine. I hope the story may be true ; for it wouk 
have been a becoming death for such a miserable creature, j 
The king survived him some five years. He died in] 
the forty-second year of his life, and the twenty- third of 
his reign. He had a very good capacity, and some gooc 
points ; but he was selfish, careless, sensual, and cruel. He 
was a favorite with the people for his showy manners ; anc 
the people were a good example to him in the constancy 
of their attachment. He was penitent on his death-bed 
for his "benevolences" and other extortions, and ordered 
restitution to be made to the people who had suffered 
from them. He also called about his bed the enriched 
members of the Woodville family, and the proud lords 
whose honors were of older date, and endeavored to recon- 
cile them, for the sake of the peaceful succession of his 
son, and the tranquillity of England. 



EDWARD THE FIFTH. 223 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIFTH. 

The late king's eldest son, the Prince of Wales, called 
Edward, after him, was only thirteen years of age at his 
father's death. He was at Ludlow Castle with his uncle, 
the Earl of Rivers. The prince's brother, the Duke of 
York, only eleven years of age, was in London with his 
mother. The boldest, most crafty, and most dreaded noble- 
man in England at that time was their uncle Richard, 
Duke of Gloucester, and everybody wondered how the 
two poor boys would fare with such an uncle for a friend 
or a foe. 

The queen, their mother, being exceedingly uneasy about 
this, was anxious that instructions should be sent to Lord 
Rivers to raise an army to escort the young king safely 
to London. But Lord Hastings, who was of the court 
party opposed to the Woodvilles, and who disliked the 
thought of giving them that power, argued against the 
proposal, and obliged the queen to be satisfied with an 
escort of two thousand horse. The Duke of Gloucester 
did nothing, at first, to justify suspicion. He came from 
Scotland (where he was commanding an army) to York, 
and was there the first to swear allegiance to his nephew. 
He then wrote a condoling letter to the queen-mother, 
and set off to be present at the coronation in London. 

Now, the young king, journeying towards London too. 
with Lord Rivers and Lord Gray, came to Stony Stratford 
as his uncle came to Northampton, about ten miles distant ; 
and when those two lords heard that the Duke of Glouces- 
ter was so near, they proposed to the young king that 
they should go back and greet him in his name. The 
boy being very willing that they should do so, they rode 
off and were received with great friendliness, and asked 
by the Duke of Gloucester to stay and dine with him. 



224 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

In the evening, while they were merry together, up came 
the Duke of Buckingham with three hundred horsemen ; 
and next morning the two lords, and the two dukes, 
and the three hundred horsemen rode away together to 
rejoin the king. Just as they were entering Stony Strat- 
ford, the Duke of Gloucester, checking his horse, turned 
suddenly on the two lords, charged them with alienating 
from him the affections of his sweet nephew, and caused 
them to be arrested by the three hundred horsemen and 
taken back. Then he and the Duke of Buckingham 
went straight .to the king (whom they had now in their | 
power), to whom they made a show of kneeling down, and 
offering great love and submission ; and then they ordered 
his attendants to disperse, and took him, alone with them, 
to Northampton. 

A few days afterwards they conducted him to London, 
and lodged him in the bishop's palace. But he did not 
remain there long ; for the Duke of Buckingham, with a 
tender face, made a speech, expressing, how anxious he 
was for the royal boy's safety, and how much safer he 
would be in the Tower until his coronation, than he could 
be anywhere else. So to the Tower he was taken, very 
carefully, and the Duke of Gloucester was named Pro-: 
tector of the State. 

Although Gloucester had proceeded thus far with a very 
smooth countenance ; and although he was a clever man, 
fair of speech, and not ill-looking, in spite of one of his 
shoulders being something higher than the other; and 
although he had come into the city riding bare-headed 
at the king's side, and looking very fond of him, — he 
had made the king's mother more uneasy yet ; and, when 
the royal boy was taken to the Tower, she became so 
alarmed, that she took sanctuary in Westminster with her 
five daughters. 

Nor did she do this without reason; .for the Duke of 
Gloucester, finding that the lords who were opposed to 
the Woodville family were faithful to the young king 
nevertheless, quickly resolved to strike a blow for himself. 
Accordingly, while those lords met in council at the Tower, 
he and those who were in his interest met in separate 
council at his own residence, Crosby Palace, in Bishops- 
gate Street. Being at last quite prepared, he one day ap- 
peared unexpectedly at the council in the Tower, and ap- 



EDWARD THE FIFTH. 225 

peared to be very jocular and merry. He was particularly 
gay with the Bishop of Ely : praising the strawberries that 
grew in his garden on Holborn Hill, and asking him to have 
some gathered that he might eat them at dinner. The 
bishop, quite proud of the honor, sent one of his men to 
fetch some ; and the duke, still very jocular and gay, went 
out, and the council all said what a very agreeable duke 
he was ! In a little time, however, he came back quite 
altered ; not at all jocular, frowning and fierce ; and sud- 
denly said, — 

" What do those persons deserve who have compassed 
my destruction; I being the king's lawful, as well as 
natural, protector ? " 

To this strange question, Lord Hastings replied, that 
they deserved death, whosoever they were. 

" Then,"^ said the duke, " I tell you that they are that 
sorceress, my brother's wife," meaning the queen, " and 
that other sorceress, Jane Shore, — who, by witchcraft, 
have withered my body, and caused my arm to shrink as 
I now show you. " 

He then pulled up his sleeve, and showed them his 
arm, which was shrunken, it is true, but which. had been 
so, as they all very well knew, from the hour of his 
birth. 

Jane Shore, being then the lover of Lord Hastings, 
as she had formerly been of the late king, that lord 
knew that he himself was attacked. So he said, in some 
confusion, " Certainly, my Lord, if they have done this, 
they be worthy of punishment." 

f If ? " said the Duke of Gloucester. " Do you talk to 
me of ifs ? I tell you that they have so done ; and I will 
make it good upon thy body, thou traitor ! " 

With that, he struck the table a great blow with his 
ust. This was a signal to some of his people outside to 
3ry, " Treason ! " They immediately did so, and there was 
i rush into the chamber of so many armed men that it 
>vas filled in a moment. { 

"First," said the Duke of Gloucester to Lord Hast- 
ngs, "I arrest thee, traitor! And let him," he added to 
he armed men who took him, " have a priest at once ; 
or, by St. Paul, I will not dine until I have seen his 
'.ead off!" 

Lord Hastings was hurried to the green by the Tower 



226 A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 

chapel, and there beheaded on a log of wood that hap- 
pened to be lying on the ground. Then the duke dined 
with a good appetite ; and after dinner, summoning the 
principal citizens to attend him, told them that Lord 
Hastings, and the rest, had designed to murder both: 
himself and the Duke of Buckingham, who stood by his 
side, if he had not providentially discovered their design. 
He requested them to be so obliging as to inform their 
fellow-citizens of the truth of what he said, and issued 
a proclamation (prepared and neatly copied out before- 
hand) to the same effect. . 

On the same day that the duke did these things in 
the Tower, Sir Eichard Eatcliffe, the boldest and most, 
undaunted of his men, went down to Pontefract, arrested 
Lord Eivers, Lord Gray, and two other gentleman ; and! 
publicly executed them on the scaffold, without any trial, 
for having intended the duke's death. Three days after- 
wards, the duke, not to lose time, went down the river 
to Westminster in his barge, attended by divers bishops, 
lords, and soldiers,' and demanded that the queen should de- 
liver her second son, the Duke of York, into his safe-keep-; 
ins The queen, being obliged to comply, resigned the child 
after she had wept over him ; and Eichard of Glouces- 
ter placed him with his brother in the Tower Then he, 
seized Jane Shore; and, because she had been the lover of 
the late king, confiscated her property, and got her sen- 
tenced to do public penance in the streets, by walking, in 
a scanty dress, with bare feet, and carrying a lighted candle,, 
to St. Paul's Cathedral, through the most crowded part oil 

the city. . .. . 

Having now all things ready for his own advancement 
he caused a friar to preach a sermon at the cross which 
stood in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, in which he dwelt 
upon the profligate manners of the late king, and upon 
the late shame of Jane Shore, and hinted that the prince, 
were not his children. " Whereas, good people, said the 
friar, whose name was Shaw, "my Lord the Protector 
the noble Duke of Gloucester, that sweet prince, the pat 
tern of all the noblest virtues, is the perfect image anc 
express likeness of his father." There had been a littl> 
plot between the duke and the friar, that the duke shoiik 
appear in the crowd at this moment, when it was expectei 
that the people would cry, "Long live King Eichard! 



EDWARD THE FIFTH. 227 

But either through the friar saying the words too soon, 
or through the duke's coming too late, the duke and the 
words did not come together, and the people only laughed, 
and the friar sneaked off ashamed. 

The Duke of Buckingham was a better hand at such 
business than the friar : so he went to the Guildhall the 
next day, and addressed the citizens in the Lord Pro- 
tector's behalf. A few dirty men, who had been hired 
and stationed there for the purpose, crying, when he had 
done, " God save King Richard ! " he made them a great 
bow, and thanked them with all his heart. Next day, to 
make an end of it, he went with the mayor and some 
lords and citizens to Bayard Castle, by the river, where 
Richard then was, and read an address, humbly entreating 
him to accept the crown of England. Richard, who looked 
down upon them out of a window, and pretended to be in 
great uneasiness and alarm, assured them there was nothing 
he desired less, and that his deep affection for his nephews 
forbade him to think of it. To this the Duke of Buck- 
ingham replied, with pretended warmth, that the free peo- 
ple of England would never submit to his nephew's rule ; 
and that if Richard, who was the lawful heir, refused the 
crown, why then they must find some one else to wear it. 
The Duke of Gloucester returned, that since he used 
that strong language, it became his painful duty to think 
no more of himself, and to accept the crown. 

Upon that the people cheered and dispersed; and the 
Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of Buckingham passed 
a pleasant evening, talking over the play they had just 
acted with so much success, and every word of which they 
had prepared together. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE THIRD. 

King Richard the Third was up betimes in the 
morning, and went to Westminster Hall. In the hall was 
a marble seat, upon which he sat himself down between 
two great noblemen, and told the people that he began the 
new reign in that place, because the first duty of a sover- 
eign was to administer the laws equally to all, and to 
maintain justice. He then mounted his horse, and rode 
back to the city, where he was received by the clergy and 
the crowd as if he really had a right to the throne, and 
really were a just man. The clergy and the crowd must 
have been rather ashamed of themselves in secret, I think, 
for being such poor-spirited knaves. 

The new king and his queen were soon crowned with a 
great deal of show and noise, which the people liked very 
much ; and then the king set forth on a royal progress 
through his dominions. He was crowned a second time at 
York, in order that the people might have show and noise 
enough ; and wherever he went was received with shouts 
of rejoicing, — from a good many people of strong lungs, 
who were paid to strain their throats in crying, " God save 
King Richard ! " The plan was so successful, that I am 
told it has been imitated since, by other usurpers, in other 
progresses through other dominions. 

While he was on this journey, King Richard staid a 
week at Warwick. And from Warwick he sent instruc- 
tions home for one of the wickedest murders that ever was 
done, — the murder of the two young princes, his nephews, 
who were shut up in the Tower of London. 

Sir Robert Brackenbury was at that time Governor of 
the Tower. To him, by the hands of a messenger named 
John Green, did King Richard send a letter, ordering 
him by some means to put the two young princes to death. 



RICHARD THE THIRD. 229 

But Sir Eobert — I hope because he had children of his 
own, and loved them — sent John Green back again, riding 
and spurring along the dusty roads, with the answer that 
he could not do so horrible a piece of work. The king, 
having frowningly considered a little, called to him Sir 
James Tyrrel, his master of the horse, and to him gave 
authority to take command of the Tower, whenever he 
would, for twenty-four hours, and to keep all the keys of 
the Tower during that space of time. Tyrrel, well-knowing 
what was wanted, looked about him for two hardened 
ruffians, and chose John Dighton, one of his own grooms, 
and Miles Forest, who was a murderer by trade. Hav- 
ing secured these two assistants, he went upon a day in 
August to the Tower, showed his authority from the king, 
took the command for four and twenty hours, and obtained 
possession of the keys. And when the black night came, 
he went-ereeping, creeping, like a guilty villain as he was, 
up the dark stone winding stairs, and along the dark stone 
passages, until he came to the door of the room where the 
two young princes, having said their prayers, lay fast 
asleep, clasped in each other's arms. And, while he watched 
and listened at the door, he sent in those evil demons, 
John Dighton and Miles Forest, who smothered the two 
princes with the bed and pillows, and carried their bodies 
down the stairs, and buried them under a great heap of 
stones at the staircase foot. And, when the day came, he 
gave up the command of the Tower, and restored the keys, 
and hurried away without once looking behind him ; and 
Sir Eobert Brackenbury went with fear and sadness to the 
princes' room, and found the princes gone forever. 

You know through all this history, how true it is that 
traitors are never true ; and you will not be surprised to 
learn that the Duke of Buckingham soon turned against 
King Richard, and joined a great conspiracy that was 
formed to dethrone him, and to place the crown upon its 
rightful owner's head. Richard had meant to keep the 
murder secret ; but when he heard through his spies that 
this conspiracy existed, and that many lords and gentlemen 
drank in secret to the healths of the two young princes in 
the Tower, he made it known that they were dead. The con- 
spirators, though thwarted for a moment, soon resolved to 
set up for the crown, against the murderous Richard, Hen- 
ry, Earl of Richmond, grandson of Catherine, that widow 
20 



230 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of Henry the Fifth who married Owen Tudor. And, as 
Henry was of the house of Lancaster, they proposed that 
he should marry the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daugh- 
ter of the late king, now the heiress of the house of York, 
and thus by uniting the rival families put an end to the 
fatal wars of the Red and White Roses. All being settled, 
a time was appointed for Henry to come over from Brit- 
tany, and for a great rising against Richard to take place 
in several parts of England at the same hour. On a certain 
day, therefore, in October, the revolt took place ; but unsuc- 
cessfully. Richard was prepared, Henry was driven back 
at sea by a storm, his followers in England were dispersed, 
and the Duke of Buckingham was taken, and at once be- 
headed in the market-place at Salisbury. 

The time of his success was a good time, Richard 
thought, for summoning a parliament, and getting some 
money. So a parliament was called ; and it flattered and 
fawned upon him as much as he could possibly desire, and 
declared him to be the rightful king of England, and his 
only son Edward, then eleven years of age, the next heir to 
the throne. 

Richard knew full well, that, let the Parliament say what 
it would, the Princess Elizabeth was remembered by people 
as the heiress of the house of York ; and having accurate 
information besides, of its being designed by the conspira- 
tors to marry her to Henry of Richmond, he felt that it 
would much strengthen him and weaken them, to be before- 
hand with them, and marry her to his son. With this 
view he went to the Sanctuary at Westminster, where the 
late king's widow and her daughter still were, and besought 
them to come to court : where (he swore by any thing and 
every thing) they should be safely and honorably enter- 
tained. They came accordingly ; but had scarcely been at 
court a month when his son died suddenly, — or was 
poisoned, — and his plan was crushed to pieces. 

In this extremity King Richard, always active, thought, 
" I must make another plan." And he made the plan of 
marrying the Princess Elizabeth himself, although she was 
his niece. There was one difficulty in the way : his wife, 
the Queen Anne, was alive. But he knew (remembering 
his nephews) how to remove that obstacle ; and he made 
love to the Princess Elizabeth, telling her he felt perfectly 
confident that the queen would die in February. The 



RICHARD THE THIRD. 231 

princess was not a very scrupulous young lady : for, instead 
of rejecting the murderer of her brothers with scorn and 
hatred, she openly declared she loved him dearly ; and when 
February came, and the queen did not die, she expressed 
her impatient opinion that she was too long about it. How- 
ever, King Richard was not so far out in his prediction but 
that she died in March, — he took good care of that ; and 
then this precious pair hoped to be married. But they 
were disappointed ; for the idea of such a marriage was so 
unpopular in the country, that the king's chief counsellors, 
Ratcliffe and Catseby, would by no means undertake 
to propose it, and the king was even obliged to declare in 
public that he had never thought of such a thing. 

He was by this time dreaded and hated by all classes of 
his subjects. His nobles deserted every day to Henry's 
side ; he dared not call another parliament, lest his crimes 
shouldi)e denounced there ; and, for want of money, he was 
obliged to get " benevolences " from the citizens, which exas- 
perated them all against him. It was said too, that, being 
stricken by his conscience, he dreamed frightful dreams, 
and started up in the night-time, wild with terror and 
remorse. Active to the last through all this, he issued 
vigorous proclamations against Henry of Richmond and all 
his followers, when he heard that they were coming against 
him with a fleet from France, and took the field as fierce 
and savage as a wild boar, — the animal represented on his 
shield. 

Henry of Richmond landed with six thousand men at 
Milford Haven, and came on against King Richard, then 
encamped at Leicester with an army twice as great, through 
North Wales. On Bosworth Field the two armies met ; 
and Richard looking along Henry's ranks, and seeing them 
crowded with the English nobles who had abandoned him, 
turned pale when he beheld the powerful Lord Stanley and 
his son (whom he had tried hard to retain) among them. 
But he was as brave as he was wicked, and plunged into 
the thickest of the fight. He was riding hither and thither, 
laying about him in all directions, when he observed the 
Earl of Northumberland — one of his few great allies — 
to stand inactive, and the main body of his troops to 
hesitate. At the same moment, his desperate glance caught 
Henry of Richmond among a little group of his knights. 
Riding hard at him, and crying, " Treason ! " he killed his 



232 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

standard-bearer, fiercely unhorsed another gentleman, and 
aimed a powerful stroke at Henry himself, to cut him down. 
^But Sir William Stanley parried it as it fell ; and, before 
Richard could raise his arm again, he was borne down in a 
press of numbers, unhorsed, and killed. Lord Stanley 
picked up the crown, all bruised and trampled, and stained 
with blood, and put it upon Richmond's head, amid loud 
and rejoicing cries of "Long live King Henry ! " 

That night, a horse was led up to the Church of the 
Gray Friars at Leicester, across whose back was tied, like 
some worthless sack, a naked body brought there for burial. 
It was the body of the last of the Plantagenet line, King 
Richard the Third, usurper and murderer, slain at the battle 
of Bosworth Field in the thirty-second year of his age, 
after a reign of two years. 



HENRY THE SEVENTH. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH. 

King Henry the Seventh did not turn out to be as 
fine a fellow as the nobility and people hoped, in the first 
joy of their deliverance from Richard the Third. He was 
very cold, crafty, and calculating, and would do almost any 
thing for money. He possessed considerable ability ; but 
his chief merit appears to have been that he was not cruel 
when there was nothing to be got by it. 

The new king had promised the nobles who had espoused 
his cause that he would marry the Princess Elizabeth. The 
first thing he did was to direct her to be removed from the 
castle of Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, where Eichard had 
placed her, and restored to the care of her mother in Lon- 
don. The young Earl of Warwick, Edward Plantagenet, 
son and heir of the late Duke of Clarence, had been kept 
a prisoner in the same old Yorkshire castle with her. This 
boy, who was now fifteen, the new king placed in the 
Tower for safety. Then he came to London in great state, 
and gratified the people with a fine procession ; on which 
kind of show he often very much relied for keeping them 
in good humor. The sports and feasts which took place 
were followed by a terrible fever, called the sweating sick- 
ness ; of which great numbers of people died. Lord mayors 
and aldermen are thought to have suffered most from it ; 
whether because they were in the habit of over-eating 
themselves, or because they were very jealous of preserving 
filth and nuisances in the city (as they have been since), I 
don't know. 

The king's coronation was postponed on account of the 
general ill-health ; and he afterwards deferred his marriage, 
as if he were not very anxious that it should take place ; 
and, even after that, deferred the queen's coronation so 
long that he gave offence to the York party. However, he 
20* 



234 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

set these things right in the end, by hanging some men, 
and seizing on the rich possessions of others, by granting 
more popular pardons to the followers of the late king than 
could at first be got from him ; and by employing about 
his court some not very scrupulous persons who had been 
employed in the previous reign. 

As this reign was principally remarkable for two very 
curious impostures which have become famous in history, 
we will make those two stories its principal feature. 

There was a priest at Oxford of the name of Simons, 
who had for a pupil a handsome boy named Lambert Sim- 
nel, the son of a baker. Partly to gratify his own ambi- 
tious ends, and partly to carry out the designs of a secret 
party formed against the king, this priest declared that his 
pupil, the boy, was no other than the young Earl of War- 
wick, who (as everybody might have known) was safely 
locked up in the Tower of London. The priest and the 
boy went over to Ireland ; and at Dublin enlisted in their 
cause all ranks of the people, who seem to have been gener- 
ous enough, but exceedingly irrational. The Earl of Kil- 
dare, the Governor of Ireland, declared that he believed 
the boy to be what the priest represented; and the boy, 
who had been well tutored by the priest, told them such 
things of his childhood, and gave them so many descrip- 
tions of the royal family, that they were perpetually 
shouting and hurrahing, and drinking his health, and mak- 
ing all kinds of noisy and thirsty demonstrations to ex- 
press their belief in him. Nor was this feeling confined to 
Ireland alone; for the Earl of Lincoln, whom the late 
usurper had named as his successor, went over to the 
young pretender; and, after holding a secret correspond- 
ence with the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, the sister 
of Edward the Fourth, who detested the present king and 
all his race, sailed to Dublin with two thousand German 
soldiers of her providing. In this promising state of the 
boy's fortunes, he was crowned there, with a crown taken 
off the head of a statue of the Virgin Mary ; and was then, 
according to the Irish custom of those days, carried home 
on the shoulders of a big chieftain possessing a great deal 
more strength than sense. Father Simons, you may be 
sure, was mighty busy at the coronation. 

Ten days afterwards, the Germans and the Irish, and 
the priest and the boy, and the Earl of Lincoln, all landed 



HENRY THE SEVENTH. 235 

in Lancashire to invade England. The king, who had 
good intelligence of their movements, set up his standard 
at Nottingham, where vast numbers resorted to him every- 
day, while the Earl of Lincoln could gain but very few. 
With his small force he tried to make for the town of 
Newark; but the king's army getting between him and 
that place, he had no choice but to risk a battle at Stoke. 
It soon ended in the complete destruction of the pretend- 
er's forces, one half of whom were killed ; among them, the 
earl himself. The priest and the baker's boy were taken 
prisoners. The priest, after confessing the trick, was shut 
up in prison, where he afterwards died, — suddenly perhaps. 
The boy was taken into the king's kitchen, and made a 
turnspit. He was afterwards raised to the station of one 
of the king's falconers; and so ended this strange im- 
position. 

There seems reason to suspect that the dowager queen 
— always a restless and busy woman — had had some share 
in tutoring the baker's son. The king was very angry with 
her, whether or no. He seized upon her property, and shut 
her up in a convent at Bermondsey. 

One might suppose that the end of this story would have 
put the Irish people on their guard ; but they were quite 
ready to receive a second impostor, as they had received the 
first, and that same troublesome Duchess of Burgundy soon 
gave them the opportunity. All of a sudden there appeared 
at Cork, in a vessel arriving from Portugal, a young man of 
excellent abilities, of very handsome appearance and most 
winning manners, who declared himself to be Richard, Duke 
of York, the second son of King Edward the Fourth. 
" Oh," said some, even of those ready Irish believers, " but 
surely that young prince was murdered by his uncle in the 
tower ! " — " It is supposed so," said the engaging young 
man ; " and my brother was killed in that gloomy prison ; 
but I escaped, — it don't matter how at present, — and have 
been wandering about the world for seven long years." 
This explanation being quite satisfactory to numbers of the 
Irish people, they began again to shout and to hurrah, and 
to drink his health, and to make the noisy and thirsty dem- 
onstrations all over again. And the big chieftain in Dub- 
lin began to look out for another coronation, and another 
young king to be carried home on his back. 

Now, King Henry being then on bad terms with France, 



236 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

the French king, Charles the Eighth, saw, that, by pretend- 
ing to believe in the handsome young man, he could trouble 
his enemy sorely. So he invited him over to the French 
court, and appointed him a body-guard, and treated him in 
all respects as if he really were the Duke of York. Peace, 
however, being soon concluded between the two kings, the 
pretended duke was turned adrift, and wandered for protec- 
tion to the Duchess of Burgundy. She, after feigning to 
inquire into the reality of his claims, declared him to be 
the very picture of her dear departed brother, gave him a 
body-guard at her court of thirty halberdiers, and called 
him by the sounding name of the White Rose of Eng- 
land. 

The leading members of the White-Rose party in Eng- 
land sent over an agent, named Sir Robert Clifford, to as- 
certain whether the White Rose's claims were good ; the 
king also sent over his agents to inquire into the Rose's 
history. The White Roses declared the young man to be 
really the Duke of York; the king declared him to be 
Perkin Warbeck, the son of a merchant of the city of 
Tournay, who had acquired his knowledge of England, its 
language and manners, from the English merchants who 
traded in Flanders ; it was also stated by the royal agents 
that he had been in the service of Lady Brompton, the wife 
of an exiled English nobleman, and that the Duchess of Bur- 
gundy had caused him to be trained and taught expressly 
for this deception. The king then required the Archduke 
Philip — who was the sovereign of Burgundy — to banish 
this new pretender, or to deliver him up ; but, as the arch- 
duke replied that he could not control the duchess in her 
own land, the king, in revenge, took the market of English 
cloth away from Antwerp, and prevented all commercial in- 
tercourse between the two countries. 

He also, by arts and bribes, prevailed on Sir Robert Clif- 
ford to betray his employers ; and he denouncing several 
famous English noblemen as being secretly the friends of 
Perkin Warbeck, the king had three of the foremost ex- 
ecuted at once. Whether he pardoned the remainder be- 
cause they were poor, I do not know ; but it is only too 
probable that he refused to pardon one famous nobleman 
against whom the same Clifford soon afterwards informed 
separately, because he was rich. This was no other than 
Sir William Stanley, who had saved the king's life at the 



HENRY THE SEVENTH. 237 

battle of Bosworth Field. It is very doubtful whether his 
treason amounted to much more than his having said, that, 
if he were sure the young man was the Duke of York, he 
would not take arms against him. Whatever he had done 
he admitted, like an honorable spirit ; and he lost his head 
for it, and the covetous king gained all his wealth. 

Perkin Warbeck kept quiet for three years ; but, as the 
Flemings began to complain heavily of the loss of their 
trade by the stoppage of the Antwerp market on his ac- 
count, and as it was not unlikely that they might even go 
so far as to take his life, or give him up, he found it neces- 
sary to do something. Accordingly, he made a desperate 
sally, and landed, with only a few hundred men, on the 
coast of Deal. But he was soon glad to get back to the 
place from whence he. came ; for the country people rose 
against his followers, killed a great many, and took a hun- 
dred and fifty prisoners, who were all driven to -London, 
tied together with ropes, like a team of cattle. Every one 
of them was hanged on some part or other of the sea-shore, 
in order, that, if any more men should come over with Perkin 
Warbeck, they might see the bodies as a warning before 
they landed. 

Then the wary king, by making a treaty of commerce 
with the Flemings, drove Perkin Warbeck out of that 
country ; and, by completely gaining over the Irish to his 
side, deprived him of that asylum k>o. He wandered away 
to Scotland, and told his story at that court. King James 
the Fourth of Scotland, who was no friend to King Henry, 
and had no reason to be (for King Henry had bribed his 
Scotch lords to betray him more than once, but had never 
succeeded in his plots), gave him a great reception, called 
him his cousin, and gave him in marriage the Lady Cathe- 
rine Gordon, a beautiful and charming creature, related to 
the royal house of Stuart. 

Alarmed by this successful re-appearance of the Pretender, 
the king still undermined and bought and bribed, and kept 
his doings and Perkin Warbeck's story in the dark, when 
he might, one would imagine, have rendered the matter clear 
to all England. But for all this bribing of the Scotch lords, 
at the Scotch king's court, he could not procure the Pre- 
tender to be delivered up to him. James, though not very 
particular in many respects, would not betray him ; and the 
ever-busy Duchess of Burgundy so provided him with arms 



238 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and good soldiers, and with money besides, that he had soon 
a little army of fifteen hundred men of various nations. 
With these, and aided by the Scottish king in person, he 
crossed the Border into England, and made a proclamation 
to the people; in which he called the king "Henry Tudor," 
offered large rewards to any who should take or distress 
him, and announced himself as King Richard the Fourth, 
come to receive the homage of his faithful subjects. His 
faithful subjects, however, cared nothing for him, and hated 
his faithful troops, who, being of different nations, quarrelled 
also among themselves. Worse than this, if worse were pos- 
sible, they began to plunder the country ; upon which the 
White Rose said, that he would rather lose his rights than 
gain them through the miseries of the English people. 
The Scottish king made a jest of his scruples ; but they 
and their whole force went back again without fighting a 
battle. 

The worst consequence of this attempt was, that a rising 
took place among the people of Cornwall, who considered 
themselves too heavily taxed to meet the charges of the ex- 
pected war. Stimulated by Flammock a lawyer, and Joseph 
a blacksmith, and joined by Lord Aiidley and some other 
country gentlemen, they marched on all the way to Dept- 
ford Bridge, where they fought a battle with the king's 
army. They were defeated, though the Cornish men 
fought with great bravery; and the lord was oeheaded, 
and the lawyer and the blacksmith were hanged, drawn, and 
quartered. The rest were pardoned. The king, who be- 
lieved every man to be as avaricious as himself, and thought 
that money could settle any thing, allowed them to make 
bargains for their liberty with the soldiers who had taken 
them. 

Perkin Warbeck, doomed to wander up and down, and 
never to find rest anywhere, — a sad fate, almost a sufficient 
punishment for an imposture which he seems in time to have 
half believed himself, — lost his Scottish refuge through a 
truce being made between the two kings, and found him- 
self once more without a country before him in which he 
could lay his head. But James (always honorable and true 
to him, alike when he melted down his plate, and even the 
great gold chain he had been used to wear, to pay soldiers 
in his cause, and now, when that cause was lost and hope- 
less) did not conclude the treaty until he had safely departed 



HENRY THE SEVENTH. 239 

out of the Scottish dominions. He and his beautiful wife, 
who was faithful to him under all reverses, and left her state 
and home to follow his poor fortunes, were put aboard ship 
with every thing necessary for their comfort and protection, 
and sailed for Ireland. 

But the Irish people had had enough of counterfeit Earls 
of Warwick and Dukes of York for one while, and would 
give the White Rose no aid. So the White Rose — encir- 
cled by thorns indeed — resolved to go with his beautiful 
wife to Cornwall as a forlorn resource, and see what might 
be made of the Cornish men, who had risen so valiantly a 
little while before, and who had fought so bravely at Dept- 
ford Bridge. 

To Whitsand Bay, in Cornwall, accordingly, came Perkin 
Warbeck and his wife j and the lovely lady he shut up for 
safety in the castle of St. Michael's Mount, and then 
marched- into Devonshire at the head of three thousand 
Cornish men. These were increased to six thousand by the 
time of his arrival in Exeter ; but there the people made a 
stout resistance, and he went on to Taunton, where he came 
in sight of the king's army. The stout Cornish men, al- 
though they were few in number, and badly armed, were so 
bold, that they never thought of retreating, but bravely 
looked forward to a battle on the morrow. Unhappily for 
them, the man who was possessed of so many engaging 
qualities, and who attracted so many people to his side when 
he had nothing else with which to tempt them, was not as 
brave as they. In the night, when the two armies lay op- 
posite to each other, he mounted a swift horse and fled. 
When morning dawned, the poor confiding Cornish men, 
discovering that they had no leader, surrendered to the 
king's power. Some of them were hanged, and the rest 
were pardoned, and went miserably home. 

Before the king pursued Perkin Warbeck to the sanctu- 
ary of Beaulieu in the New Forest, where it was soon known 
that he had taken refuge, he sent a body of horsemen to St. 
Michael's Mount to seize his wife. She was soon taken, and 
brought as a captive before the king. But she was so beau- 
tiful and so good, and so devoted to the man in whom she 
believed, that the king regarded her with compassion, 
treated her with great respect, and placed her at court, 
near the queen's person. And many years after Perkin 
Warbeck was no more, and when his strange story had be- 



240 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

come like a nursery tale, she was called the White Rose, by 
the people, in remembrance of her beauty. 

The sanctuary at Beaulieu was soon surrounded by the 
king's men ; and the king, pursuing his usual dark, artful 
ways, sent pretended friends to Perkin Warbeck to persuade 
him to come out and surrender himself. This he soon did ; 
the king having taken a good look at the man of whom he 
had heard so much, from behind a screen, directed him to 
be well mounted, and to ride behind him at a little distance, 
guarded, but not bound in any way. So they entered Lon- 
don with the king's favorite show, — a procession ; and some 
of the people hooted as the Pretender rode slowly through 
the streets to the Tower, but the greater part were quiet, 
and very curious to see him. From the Tower he was taken 
to the palace at Westminster, and there lodged like a gen- 
tleman, though closely watched. He was examined every 
now and then as to his imposture ; but the king was so 
secret in all he did, that even then he gave it a consequence 
which it cannot be supposed to have in itself deserved. 

At last Perkin Warbeck ran away, and took refuge in 
another sanctuary near Richmond in Surrey. From this 
he was again persuaded to deliver himself up ; and, being 
conveyed to London, he stood in the stocks for a whole day, 
outside Westminster Hall, and there read a paper purport- 
ing to be his full confession, and relating his history as the 
king's agents had originally described it. He was then shut 
up in the Tower again, in the company of the Earl of War- 
wick, who had now been there for fourteen years, — ever since 
his removal out of Yorkshire, except when the king had had 
him at court, and had shown him to the people, to prove the 
imposture of the baker's boy. It is but too probable, when 
we consider the crafty character of Henry the Seventh, that 
these two were brought together for a cruel purpose. A 
plot was soon discovered between them and the keepers, to 
murder the governor, get possession of the keys, and pro- 
claim Perkin Warbeck as King Eichard the Fourth. That 
there was some such plot is likely ; that they were tempted 
into it is at least as likely ; that the unfortunate Earl of 
Warwick — last male of the Plantagenet line — was too un- 
used to the world, and too ignorant and simple to know 
much about it, whatever it was, is perfectly certain ; and that 
it was the king's interest to get rid of him is no less so. 
He was beheaded on Tower Hill, and Perkin Warbeck was 
hanged at Tyburn. 



HENRY THE SEVENTH. 241 

Such was the end of the pretended I^uke of York, whose 
shadowy history was made more shadowy, and ever will be, 
by the mystery and craft of the king. If he had turned 
his great natural advantages to a more honest account, he 
might have lived a happy and respected life, even in those 
days ; but he died upon a gallows at Tyburn, leaving the 
Scottish lady, who had loved him so well, kindly protected 
at the queen's court. After some time she forgot her old 
loves and troubles, as many people do with Time's merciful 
assistance, and married a Welsh gentleman. Her second 
husband, Sir Matthew Cradoc, more honest and more 
happy than her first, lies beside her in a tomb in the old 
church of Swansea. 

The ill-blood between France and England, in this reign, 
arose out of the continued plotting of the Duchess of Bur- 
gundy, and disputes respecting the affairs of Brittany. The 
king feigned to be very patriotic, indigant, and warlike ; 
but he always contrived so as never to make war in reality, 
and always to make money. His taxation of the people, on 
pretence of war with France, involved at one time a very 
dangerous insurrection, headed by Sir John Egremont, and 
a common man called John a Chambre. But it was sub- 
dued by the royal forces, under the command of the Earl of 
Surrey. The knighted John escaped to the Duchess of 
Burgundy, who was ever ready to receive any one who gave 
the king trouble ; and the plain John was hanged at York, 
in the midst of a number of his men, but on a much higher 
gibbet, as being a greater traitor. Hung high or hung low, 
however, hanging is much the same to the person hung. 

Within a year after her marriage, the queen had given 
birth to a son, who was called Prince Arthur, in remem- 
brance of the old British prince of romance and story ; and 
who, when all these events had happened, being then in his 
fifteenth year, was married to Catherine, the daughter of 
the Spanish monarch, with great rejoicings and bright pros- 
pects ; but in a very few months he sickened and died. As 
soon as the king had recovered from his grief, he thought 
it a pity that the fortune of the Spanish princess, amount- 
ing to two hundred thousand crowns, should go out of the 
family ; and therefore arranged that the young widow should 
marry his second son, Henry, then twelve years of age, 
when he too should be fifteen. There were objections to 
this marriage on the part of the clergy ; but as the infalli- 
21 



242 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

ble Pope was gained over, and as he must be right, that 
settled the business for the time. The king's eldest daughter 
was provided for, and a long course of disturbance was con- 
sidered to be set at rest, by her being married to the Scot- 
tish king. 

And now the queen died. When the king had got over 
that grief, too, his mind once more reverted to his darling 
money for consolation, and he thought of marrying the 
Dowager Queen of Naples, who was immensely rich ; but 
as it turned out not to be practicable to gain the money, 
however practicable it might have been to gain the lady, 
he gave up the idea. He was not so fond of her but that 
he soon proposed to marry the Dowager Duchess of Savoy; 
and, soon afterwards, the widow of the King of Castile, who 
was raving mad. But he made a money-bargain instead, 
and married neither. 

The Duchess of Burgundy, among the other discontented 
people to whom she had given refuge, had sheltered Ed- 
mund de la Pole (younger brother of that Earl of Lincoln 
who was killed at Stoke), now Earl of Suffolk. The king 
had prevailed upon him to return to the marriage of Prince 
Arthur ; but he soon afterwards went away ag^tin ; and then 
the king, suspecting a conspiracy, resorted to his favorite 
plan of sending him some treacherous friends, and buying 
of those scoundrels the secrets they disclosed or invented. 
Some arrests and executions took place in consequence. In 
the end, the king, on a promise of not taking his life, ob- 
tained possession of the person of Edmund de la Pole, and 
shut him up in the Tower. 

This was his last enemy. If he had lived much longer 
he would have made many more among the people, by the 
grinding exaction to which h% constantly exposed them, 
and by the tyrannical acts of his two prune favorites in all 
money-raising matters, Edmund Dudley and Eichakd 
Empson. But Death — the enemy who is not to be bought 
off or deceived, and on whom no money and no treachery 
has an y effect — presented himself at this juncture, and 
ended the king's reign. He died of the gout, on the 22d 
of April, 1509, and in the fifty-third year of his age, after 
reigning twenty-four years. He was buried in the beautiful 
chapel of Westminster Abbe}', which he had himself 
founded, and which still bears his name. 

It was in this reign that the great Christopher Colum- 






HENRY THE SEVENTH. 243 

bus, on behalf of Spain, discovered what was then called 
the New World. Great wonder, interest, and hope of 
wealth being awakened in England thereby, the king and 
the merchants of London and Bristol fitted out an English 
expedition for further discoveries in the New World, and 
intrusted it to Sebastian Cabot of Bristol, the son of 
a Venetian pilot there. He was very successful in his 
voyage, and gained high reputation, both for himself and 
England. 



I 



244 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



/ 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

england under henry the eighth, called bluff king hal, 
and burly king harry. 

Part the First. 

We now come to King Henry the Eighth, whom it has 
been too much the fashion to call " Bluff King Hal," and 
" Burly King Harry," and other fine names ; but whom I 
shall take the liberty to call plainly one of the most detes- 
table villains that ever drew breath. You will be able to 
judge, long before we come to the end of his life, whether 
he deserves the character. 

He was just eighteen years of age when he came to the 
throne. People said he was handsome then ; but I don't 
believe it. He was a big, burly, noisy, small-eyed, large- 
faced, double-cliinr?ed, swinish-looking fellow, in later life 
(as we know from the likenesses of him, painted by the 
famous Hans Hol^hn) ; and it is not easy to believe that 
so bad a character (Fan ever have been veiled under a pre- 
possessing appearance. 

He was anxious to make himself popular; and the people, 
who had long disliked the late king, were very willing to 
believe that he deserved to be so. He was extremely fond 
of show and display, and so were they. Therefore there 
was great rejoicing when he married the Princess Catherine, 
and when they were both crowned. And the king fought 
at tournaments, and always came off victorious, — for the 
courtiers took care of that ; and there was a general out- 
cry that he was a wonderful man. Empson, Dudley, and 
their supporters were accused of a variety of crimes they 
had never committed, instead of the offences of which they 
really had been guilty; and they were pilloried, and set 
upon horses with their faces to the tails, and knocked about 
and beheaded, to the satisfaction of the people, and the 
enrichment of the king. 

The Pope, so indefatigable in getting the world into 



HENRY THE EIGHTH. 245 

trouble, had mixed himself up in a war on the Continent 
of Europe, occasioned by the reigning princes of little 
quarrelling states in Italy having at various times married 
into other royal families, and so led to their claiming a 
share in those petty governments. The king, who discov- 
ered that he was very fond of the Pope, sent a herald to 
the King of France to say that he must not make war 
upon that holy personage, because he was the father of all 
Christians. As the French king did not mind this rela- 
tionship in the least, and also refused to admit a claim 
King Henry made to certain lands in France, war was 
declared between the two countries. Not to perplex this 
story with an account of the tricks and designs of all the 
sovereigns who were engaged in it, it is enough to say that 
England made a blundering alliance with Spain, and got 
stupidly taken in by that country, which made its own terms 
with France when it could, and left England in the lurch. 
Sir Edward Howard, a bold admiral, son of the Earl of 
Surrey, distinguished himself by his bravery against the 
French in this business; but unfortunately, he was more 
brave than wise, for, skimming into the French harbor of 
Brest with only a few rowboats, he attempted (in revenge 
for the defeat and death of Sir Thomas Kin yvett, another 
bold English admiral) to take some strong French ships, 
well defended with batteries of cannon. The upshot was, 
that he was left on board of one of theai (in consequence of 
its shooting away from his own boat), with not more than 
about a dozen men, and was thrown into the sea and 
drowned, — though not until he had taken from his breast 
his gold chain and gold whistle, which were the signs of 
his office, and had cast them into the sea to prevent their 
being made a boast of by the enemy. After this defeat, — 
which was a great one, for Sir Edward Howard was a man 
of valor and fame, — the king took it into his head to 
invade France in person; first executing that dangerous 
Earl of Suffolk, whom his father had left in the Tower, and 
appointing Queen Catherine to the charge of his kingdom 
in his absence. He sailed to Calais, where he was joined 
by Maximilian, Emperor of Germany, who pretended to be 
his soldier, and who took pay in his service, — with a good 
deal of nonsense of that sort, flattering enough to the 
vanity of a vain blusterer. The king might be successful 
enough in sham fights ; but his idea of real battles chiefly 
21* 



246 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

consisted in pitching silken tents of bright colors, thafc 
were ignominionsly blown down by the wind, and in 
making a vast display of gaudy flags and golden curtains. 
Fortune, however, favored him better than he deserved; 
for after much waste of time in tent-pitching, flag-flying, 
gold-curtaining, and other such masquerading, he gave the 
French battle at a place called Guinegate : where they 
took such an unaccountable panic, and fled with such swift- 
ness, that it was ever afterwards called by the English the 
Battle of Spurs. Instead of following up his advantage, 
the king, finding that he had had enough of real fighting, 
came home again. 

The Scottish king, though nearly related to Henry by 
marriage, had taken part against him in this war. The 
Earl of Surrey, as the English general, advanced to meet 
him when he came out of his own dominions, and crossed 
the River Tweed. The two armies came up with one ano^ 
ther when the Scottish king had also crossed the Eiver Till, 
and was encamped upon the last of the Cheviot Hills, 
called the Hill of Flodden. Along the plain below it, the 
English, when the hour of battle came, advanced. The 
Scottish army, which had been drawn up in five great 
bodies, then came steadily down in perfect silence. So 
they, in their turn, advanced to meet the English army, 
which came on in one long line ; and they attacked it with 
a body of spearmen, under Lord Home. At first they 
had the best of it ; but the English recovered themselves 
so bravely, and fought with such valor, that, when the Scot- 
tish king had almost made his way up to the royal stand- 
ard, he was slain, and the whole Scottish power routed. 
Ten thousand Scottish men lay dead that day on Flodden 
Field ; and among them numbers of the nobility and gen- 
try. For a long time afterwards, the .Scottish peasantry 
used to believe that their king had not been really killed in 
this battle, because no Englishman had found an iron belt 
he wore about his body as a penance for having been an 
unnatural and undutiful son. But whatever became of his 
belt, the English had his sword and dagger, and the ring 
from his finger, and his body too, covered with wounds. 
There is no doubt of it ; for it was seen and recognized by 
English gentlemen who had known tho Scottish king well. 

When King Henry was making ready to renew the war 
in France, the French king was contemplating peace. His 



HENRY THE EIGHTH. 247 

queen dying at this time, he proposed, though he was up- 
wards of fifty years old, to marry King Henry's sister, the 
Princess Mary, who, besides being only sixteen, was be- 
trothed to the Duke of Suffolk. As the inclinations of 
young princesses were not much considered in such matters, 
the marriage was concluded, and the poor girl was escorted 
to France, where she was immediately left as the French 
king's bride, with only one of all her English attendants. 
That one was a pretty young girl named Anne Boleyn, 
niece of the Earl of Surrey, who had been made Duke of 
Norfolk, after the victory of Flodden Field. Anne Boleyn's 
is a name to be remembered, as you will presently find. 

And now the French king, who was very proud of his 
young wife, was preparing for many years of happiness, 
and she was looking forward, I dare say, to many years of mis- 
erly, when he died within three months, and left her a young 
widow. The new French monarch, Francis the First, 
seeing how important it was to his interests that she should 
take for her second husband no one but an Englishman, 
advised her first lover, the Duke of Suffolk, when King 
Henry sent him over to France to fetch her home, to marry 
her. The princess being herself so fond of that duke as 
to tell him that he must either do so then, or forever lose 
her, they were wedded ; and Henry afterwards forgave 
* them. In making interest with the king, the Duke of Suf- 
folk had addressed his most powerful favorite and adviser, 
Thomas Wolsey, — a name very famous in history for its 
rise and downfall. 

Wolsey was the son of a respectable butcher at Ipswich, 
in Suffolk, and received so excellent an education that he 
became.a tutor to the family of the Marquis of Dorset, who 
afterwards got him appointed one of the late king's chap- 
lains. On the accession of Henry the Eighth, he was pro- 
moted, and taken into great favor. He was now Archbishop 
of York ; the Pope had made him a cardinal besides ; and 
whoever wanted influence in England, or favor with the 
king, — whether he were a foreign monarch or an English 
nobleman, — was obliged to make a friend of the great 
Cardinal Wolsey. 

He was a gay man, who could dance and jest and sing 
and drink ; and those were the roads to so much, or rather 
so little, of a heart as King Henry had. He was wonder- 
fully fond of pomp and glitter 5 and so was the king. He 



248 A CHILD'S HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. 

knew a good deal of the Church learning of that time ; 
much of which consisted in finding artful excuses and pre- 
tences for almost any wrong thing, and in arguing that 
black was white, or any other color. This kind of learning 
pleased the king too. For many such reasons, the cardinal 
was high in estimation with the king ; and, being a man of 
far greater ability, knew as well how to manage him, as a 
clever keeper may know to manage a wolf or a tiger, or any 
other cruel and uncertain beast, that, may turn upon him 
and tear him any day. Never had there been seen in Eng- 
land such state as my lord cardinal kept. His wealth was 
enormous; equal, it was reckoned, to the riches of the 
crown. His palaces were as splendid as the king's, and his 
retinue was eight hundred strong. He held his court, 
dressed out from top to toe in flaming scarlet ; and his very 
shoes were golden, set with precious stones. His followers 
rode on blood horses ; while he, with a wonderful affectation 
of humility in the midst of his great splendor, ambled on 
a mule with a red velvet saddle and bridle and golden 
stirrups. 

Through the influence of this stately priest, a grand 
meeting was arranged to take place between the French and 
English kings in France, but on ground belonging to Eng- 
land. A prodigious show of friendship and rejoicing was 
to be made on the occasion ; and heralds were sent to pro- 
claim with brazen trumpets through all the principal cities 
of Europe, that, on a certain day, the kings of France and 
England, as companions and brothers in arms, each attended 
by eighteen followers, would hold a tournament against all 
knights who might choose to come. 

Charles, the new Emperor of Germany (the old one 
being dead), wanted to prevent too cordial an alliance be- 
tween these sovereigns, and came over to England before 
the king could repair to the place of meeting ; and, besides 
making an agreeable impression upon him, secured Wol- 
sey's interest by promising that his influence should make 
him pope, when the next vacancy occurred. On the day 
when the emperor left England, the king and all the court 
went over to Calais, and thence to the place of meeting, 
between Ardres and Guisnes, commonly called the Field of 
the Cloth of Gold. Here all manner of expense and prodi- 
gality was lavished on the decorations of the show ; many 
of the knights and gentlemen being so superbly dressed 



HENRY THE EIGHTH. 249 

that it was said they carried their whole estates upon their 
shoulders. 

There were sham castles, temporary chapels, fountains 
running wine, great cellars full of wine free as water to all 
comers, silk tents, gold lace and foil, gilt lions, and such 
things without end; and, in the midst of all, the rich car- 
dinal out-shone and out-glittered all the noblemen and 
gentlemen assembled. After a treaty made between the 
:wo kings, with as much solemnity as if they had intended 
:o keep it, the lists, nine hundred feet long and three hun- 
dred and twenty broad, were opened for the tournament ; 
he Queens of France and England looking on with great 
irray of lords and ladies. Then for ten days the two sov- 
3reigns fought five combats every day, and always beat 
;keir polite adversaries ; though they do write that the 
King of England, being thrown in a wrestle one day by 
die King of-France, lost his kingly temper with his brother 
n arms, and wanted to make a quarrel of it. Then there 
s a great story belonging to this Field of the Cloth of 
3rold, showing how the English were distrustful of the 
French, and the French of the English, until Francis rode 
done one morning to Henry's tent, and, going in before he 
vas out of bed, told him in joke that he was his prisoner ; 
ind how Henry jumped out of bed and embraced Francis, 
md how Francis helped Henry to dress and warmed his 
inen for him ; and how Henry gave Francis a splendid jew- 
elled collar, and how Francis gave Henry, in return, a cost- 
y bracelet. All this and a great deal more was so written 
xbout, and sung about, and talked about at that time (and, 
:ndeed, since that time too), that the world has had good 
cause to be sick of it forever. 

Of course, nothing came of all these fine doings but a 
speedy renewal of the war between England and France, 
in which the two royal companions and brothers in arms 
longed very earnestly to damage one another. But, before 
it broke out again, the Duke of Buckingham was shame- 
fully executed on Tower Hill, on the evidence of a dis- 
charged servant, — really for nothing, except the folly of 
having believed in a friar of the name of Hopkins, who 
had pretended to be a prophet, and who had mumbled and 
jumbled out some nonsense about the duke's son being 
destined to be very great in the land. It was believed that 
the unfortunate duke had given offence to the great cardi- 



250 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

nal by expressing his mind freely about the expense and 
absurdity of the whole business of the Field of the Cloth of 
Gold. At any rate, he was beheaded, as I have said, for 
nothing. And the people who saw it done were very angry, 
and cried out that it was the work of " the butcher's son ! " 

The new war was a short one, though the Earl of Surrey 
invaded France again, and did some injury to that country. | 
It ended in another treaty of peace between the two king- 
doms, and in the discovery that the Emperor of Germany 
was not such a good friend to England in reality as he pre- 
tended to be. Neither did he keep his promise to Wolsey 
to make, him pope, though the king urged him. Two popes 
died in pretty quick succession ; but the foreign priests were 
too much for the cardinal, and kept him out of the post. So ■ 
the cardinal and king together found out that the Emperor j 
of Germany was not a man to keep faith with ; broke off a pro- 
jected marriage between the king's daughter Mary, Prin- 1 
cess of Wales, and that sovereign ; and began to consider 
whether it might not be well to marry the young lady, 
either to Francis himself, or to his eldest son. 

There now arose at Wittemberg, in Germany, the great 
leader of the mighty change in England which is called 
The Reformation, and which set the people free from their 
slavery to the priests. This was a learned doctor, named 
Martin Luther, who knew all about them ; for he had 
been a priest, and even a monk, himself. The preaching 
and writing of Wickliffe had set a number of men thinking 
on this subject ; and Luther finding one day, to his great 
surprise, that there really was a book called the New Testa- 
ment which the priests did not allow to be read, and which 
contained truths that they suppressed, began to be very 
vigorous against the whole body, from the Pope downward. 
It happened, while he was yet only beginning his vast work 
of awakening the nation, that an impudent fellow named 
Tetzel, a friar of very bad character, came into his 
neighborhood selling what were called indulgences, by 
wholesale, to raise money for beautifying the great Cathe- 
dral of St. Peter's, at Rome. Whoever bought an indul- 
gence of the Pope was supposed to buy himself off from the 
punishment of Heaven for his offences. Luther told the 
people that these indulgences were worthless bits of paper 
before God, -and that Tetzel and his masters were a crew of 
impostors in selling them. 






HENRY THE EIGHTH. , 251 

The king and the cardinal were mightily indignant at 
this presumption; and the king (with the help of Sir 
Thomas More, a wise man, whom he afterwards repaid 
by striking off his head) even wrote a book about it, with 
which the Pope was so well pleased, that he gave the king 
the title of Defender of the Faith. The king and the 
cardinal also issued flaming warnings to the people not to 
read Luther's books, on pain of excommunication. But 
they did read them for all that ; and the rumor of what 

I was in them spread far and wide. 

When this great change was thus going on, the king 

, began to show himself in his truest and worst colors. 
Anne Boleyn, the pretty little girl who had gone abroad to 
France with his sister, was by this time grown up to be 

. very beautiful, and was one of the ladies in attendance on 
Queen Catherine. Now, Queen Catherine was no longer 
young or handsome, and it is likely that she was not par- 
ticularly good tempered ; having been always rather melan- 

| choly, and having been made more so by the deaths of four 

I of her children, when they were very young. So the king 
fell in love with the fair Anne Boleyn, and said to himself, 

, " How can I be best rid of my own troublesome wife, whom 
I am tired of, and marry Anne ? " 

You recollect that Queen Catherine had been the wife of 
Henry's brother. What does the king do, after thinking it 
over, but calls his favorite priests about him, and says, Oh ! 

. his mind is in such a dreadful state, and he is so frightfully 
uneasy, because he is afraid it was not lawful for him to 
marry the queen ! Not one of those priests had the cour- 
age to hint that it was rather curious he had never thought 
of that before, and that his mind seemed to have been in a 
tolerably jolly condition during a great many years, in 
which he certainly had not fretted himself thin ; but they 
all said, Ah ! that was very true, and it was a serious busi- 
ness ; and perhaps the best way to make it right, would be 
for his majesty to be divorced ! The king replied, Yes : he 
thought that would be the best way certainly ; so they all 
went to work. 

If I were to relate to you the intrigues and plots that 
took place in the endeavor to* get this divorce, you would 
think the History of England the most tiresome book in 
the world. So I shall say no more than, that, after a vast 
deal of negotiation and evasion, the Pope issued a commis- 



252 . A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

sion to Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio (whom 
he sent over from Italy for the purpose) to try the whole 
case in England. It is supposed — and I think with 
reason — that Wolsey was the queen's enemy, because she 
had reproved him for his proud and gorgeous manner of 
life. But he did not at first know that the king Wanted 
to marry Anne Boleyn ; and, when he did know it, he even 
went down on his knees, in the endeavor to dissuade him. 

The cardinals opened their court in the Convent of the 
Black Friars, near to where the bridge of that name in 
London- now stands ; and the king and queen, that they 
might be near it, took up their lodgings at the adjoining 
palace -of Bridewell, of which nothing now remains but a 
bad prison. On the opening of the court, when the king 
and queen were called on to appear, that poor ill-used lady, 
with a dignity and firmness, and yet with a womanly affec- 
tion worthy to be always admired, went and kneeled at the 
king's feet, and said that she had come a stranger to his 
dominions ; that she had been a good and true wife to him 
for twenty years ; and that she could acknowledge no power 
in those cardinals to try whether she should be considered 
his wife after all that time, or should be put away. With that 
she got up and left the court, -and would never, afterwards 
come back to it. 

The king pretended to be very much overcome, and said, 
my lords and gentlemen, what a good woman she was 
to be sure, and how delighted he would be to live with her 
unto death, but for that terrible uneasiness in his mind 
which was quite wearing him away ! So the case went 
on, and there was nothing but talk for two months. Then 
Cardinal Campeggio, who, on behalf of the Pope, wanted 
nothing so much as delay, adjourned it for two more 
months ; and, before that time was elapsed, the Pope him- 
self adjourned it indefinitely, by requiring the king and 
queen to come to Rome and have it tried there. But, by good 
luck for the king, word was brought to him by some of his 
people, that they had happened to meet at supper Thomas 
Cranmer, a learned doctor of Cambridge, who had pro- 
posed to urge the Pope on, by referring the case to all the 
learned doctors and bishops, here and there and every- 
where, and getting their opinions that the king's marriage 
was unlawful. The king, who was now in a hurry to marry 
Anne Boleyn, thought this such a good idea, that he sent 



HENRY THE EIGHTH. 253 

for Cranmer, post-haste, and said to Lord Rochfort, 
Anne Boleyn's father, " Take this learned doctor down to 
your country-house, and there let him have a good room for 
a study, and no end of books out of which to prove that 
I may marry your daughter." Lord Rochfort, not at all 
reluctant, made the learned doctor as comfortable as he 
could ; and the learned doctor went to work to prove his 
case. All this time, the king and Anne Boleyn were writ- 
ing letters to one another almost daily, full of impatience 
to have the case settled ; and Anne Boleyn was showing 
herself (as I think) very worthy of the fate which after- 
wards befell her. 

It was bad for Cardinal Wolsey that he had left Cranmer 
to render this help. It was worse for him that he had 
tried to dissuade the king from marrying Anne Boleyn. 
Such a servant as he, to such a master as Henry, would 
probably have fallen in any case ; but between the hatred of 
the party of the queen that was, and the hatred of the party 
of the queen that was to be, he fell suddenly and heavily. 
Going down one day to the court of chancery, where he now 
presided, he was waited upon by the Dukes of Norfolk and 
Suffolk, who told him that they brought an order to him to 
resign that office, and to withdraw quietly to a house he 
had at Esher, in Surrey. The cardinal refusing, they 
rode off to the king ; and next day came back with a letter 
from him, on reading which the cardinal submitted. An 
inventory was made out of all the riches in his palace at 
York Place (now Whitehall), and he went sorrowfully up 
the river in his barge to Putney. An abject man he was, 
in spite of his pride ; for being overtaken, riding out of 
that place towards Esher, by one of the king's chamber- 
lains who brought him a kind message and a ring, he 
alighted from his mule, took off his cap, and kneeled down 
in the dirt. His poor fool, whom in his prosperous days he 
had always kept in his palace to entertain him, cut a far 
better figure than he ; for when the cardinal said to the 
chamberlain that he had nothing to send to his lord the 
king as a present but that jester, who was a most excellent 
one, it took six strong yeomen to remove the faithful fool 
from his master. 

The once proud cardinal was soon further disgraced, and 
wrote the most abject letters to his vile sovereign; who 
humbled him one day and encouraged him the next, accord- 

# 22 



254 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

ing to his humor, until he was at last ordered to go and 
reside in his diocese of York. He said he was too poor : 
but I don't know how he made that out ; for he took a hun- 
dred and sixty servants with him, and seventy-two cart- 
loads of furniture, food, and wine. He remained in that 
part of the country for the best part of a year, and showed 
himself so improved by his misfortunes, and was so mild 
and so conciliating, that he won all hearts. And indeed, 
even in his proud days, he had done some magnificent things 
for learning and education. At last he was arrested for 
high treason ; and, coming slowly on his journey towards 
London, got as far as Leicester. Arriving at Leicester 
Abbey after dark, and very ill, he said — when the monks 
came out at the gate with lighted torches to receive him — 
that he had come to lay his bones among them. He had 
indeed ; for he was taken to a bed, from which he never 
rose again. His last words were, " Had I but served God 
as diligently as I have served the king, he would not have 
given me over in my gray hairs. Howbeit, this is my just 
reward for my pains and diligence, not regarding my ser- 
vice to God, but only my duty to my prince." The news 
of his death was quickly carried to the king, who was 
amusing himself with archery in the garden of the magni- 
ficent palace at Hampton Court, which that very Wolsey 
had presented to him. The greatest emotion his royal mind 
displayed at the loss of a servant, so faithful and so ruined, 
was a particular desire to lay hold of fifteen hundred pounds 
which the cardinal was reported to have hidden some- 
where. 

The opinions concerning the divorce, of the learned doc- 
tors and bishops and others, being at last collected, and 
being generally in the king's favor, were forwarded to the 
Pope, with an entreaty that he would now grant it. The 
unfortunate Pope, who was a timid man, was half distracted 
between his fear of his authority being set aside in Eng- 
land if he did not do as he was asked, and his dread of 
offending the Emperor of Germany, who was Queen Cathe- 
rine's nephew. In this state of mind he still evaded, and 
did nothing. Then Thomas Cromwell, who had been one 
of Wolsey's faithful attendants, and had remained so even 
in his decline, advised the king to take the matter into his 
own hands, and make himself the head of the whole Church. 
This the king, by various artful means, began to do j but he 



HENRY THE EIGHTH. 255 

recompensed the clergy by allowing them to burn as many 
people as they pleased for holding Luther's opinions. You 
must understand that Sir Thomas More, the wise man who 
had helped the king with his book, had been made Chan- 
cellor in Wolsey's place. But, as he was truly attached to 
the Church as it was, even in its abuses, he, in this state 
of things, resigned. 

Being now quite resolved to get rid of Queen Catherine, 
and to marry Anne Boleyn without more ado, the king made 
Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, and directed Queen 
Catherine to leave the court. She obeyed ; but replied, that, 
wherever she went, she was queen of England still, and 
would remain so to the last. The king then married Anne 
Boleyn privately ; and the new Archbishop of Canterbury, 
within half a year, declared his marriage with Queen Cathe- 
rine void, and crowned Anne Boleyn queen. 

She might have known that no good could ever come from 
such wrong, and that the corpulent brute who had been so 
faithless and so cruel to his first wife could be more faith- 
less and more cruel to his second. She might have known, 
that, even when he was in love with her, he had been a 
mean and selfish coward, running away, like a frightened 
cur, from her society and her house, when a dangerous sick- 
ness broke out in it, and when she might easily have taken 
it and died, as several of the household did. But Anne 
Boleyn arrived at all this knowledge too late, and bought it 
at a dear price. Her bad marriage with a worse man came 
to its natural end. Its natural end was not, as we shall too 
soon see, a natural death for her. 



256 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

england under henry the eighth. 
Part the Second. 

The Pope was thrown into a very angry state of mind 
when he heard of the king's marriage, and fumed exceed- 
ingly. Many of the English monks and friars, seeing that 
their order was in danger, did the same; some even de- 
claimed against the king in church before his face, and were 
not to be stopped until he himself roared out, " Silence !" 
The king, not much the worse for this, took it pretty quietly ; 
and was very glad when his queen gave birth to a daughter, 
who was christened Elizabeth, and declared Princess of 
Wales, as her sister Mary had already been. 

One of the most atrocious features of this reign was that 
Henry the Eighth was always trimming between th e reformed 
religion and the unreformed one ; so that the more he quar- 
relled with the Pope, the more of his own subjects he roasted 
alive for not holding the Pope's opinions. Thus, an unfor- 
tunate student named John Frith, and a poor simple tailor 
named Andrew Hewet who loved him very much, and said 
that whatever John Frith believed he believed, were burnt 
in Smithneld, — to show what a capital Christian the king 
was. 

But these were speedily followed by two much greater 
victims, Sir Thomas More, and John Fisher, the Bishop of 
Rochester.. The latter, who was a good and amiable old 
man, had committed no greater offence than believing in 
Elizabeth Barton, called the Maid of Kent, — another of 
those ridiculous women who pretended to be inspired, and 
to make all sorts of heavenly revelations, though they in- 
deed uttered nothing but evil nonsense. For this offence 
— as it was pretended, but really for denying the king to 
be the supreme head of the Church-*- he got into trouble, 
and was put in prison ; but, even then, he might have been 
suffered to die naturally (short work having been made of 



HENRY THE EIGHTH. 257 

executing the Kentish Maid and her principal followers), 
but that the Pope, to spite the king, resolved to make him 
a cardinal. Upon that the king made a ferocious joke to 
the effect that the Pope might send Fisher a red hat (which 
is the way they make a cardinal), hut he should have no 
head on which to wear it ; and he was tried with all unfair- 
ness and injustice, and sentenced to death. He died like a 
noble and virtuous old man, and left a worthy name behind 
him. The king supposed, I dare say, that Sir Thomas More 
would be frightened by this example ; but as he was not 
easily terrified, and, thoroughly believing in the Pope, had 
made up his mind that the king was not the rightful head 
of the Church, he positively refused to say that he was. 
For this crime he, too, was tried and sentenced, after having 
been in prison a whole year. When he was doomed to 
death, and came away from his trial with the edge of the 
executioner's axe turned towards him, — as was always done 
in those times when a state prisoner came to that hopeless 
pass, — he bore it .quite serenely, ^and gave his blessing to 
his son, who pressed through the crowd in Westminster 
Hall, and kneeled down to receive it. But when he got to 
the Tower wharf, on his way back to his prison, and his 
favorite daughter, Margaret Roper, a very good woman, 
rushed through the guards again and again to kiss him, and 
to weep upon his neck, he was overcome at last. He soon 
recovered, and never more showed any feeling but cheerful- 
ness and courage. When he was going up the steps of the 
scaffold to his death, he said jokingly to the lieutenant of 
the Tower, observing that they were weak and shook be- 
neath his tread, "I pray you, Master Lieutenant, see me safe 
up ; and, for my coming down, I can shift for myself." 
Also he said to the executioner, after he had laid his head 
upon the block, " Let me put my beard out of the way ; for 
that, at least, has never committed any treason." Then his 
head was struck off at a blow. These two executions were 
worthy of King Henry the Eighth. Sir Thomas More was 
one of the most virtuous men in his dominions, and the 
bishop was one of his oldest and truest friends. But to be 
a friend of that fellow was almost as dangerous as to be his 
wife. 

When the news of these two murders got to Rome, the 
Pope raged against the murderer more than ever pope raged 
since the world began, and prepared a bull, ordering his 
22* 



258 A CHF " .*i OF ENGLAND. 

subjects to tL. ■ t ' :ms against him and dethrone him. The 
king took all possible precautions to keep that document 
out of his dominions, and set to work in return to suppress 
a great number of the English monasteries and abbeys. 

This destruction was begun by a body of commissioners, 
of whom Cromwell (whom the king had taken into great 
favor) was the head; and was carried on through some few 
years to its entire completion. There is no doubt that 
many of these religious establishments were religious in 
nothing but in name, and were crammed with lazy, indolent, 
and sensual monks. There is no doubt that they imposed 
upon the people in every possible way; that they had im- 
ages moved by wires, which they pretended were miracu- 
lously moved by Heaven; that they had among them a 
whole tun-measureful of teeth, all purporting to have 
come out of the head of one saint, who must indeed have 
been a very extraordinary person with that enormous al- 
lowance of grinders ; that they had bits of coal which they 
said had fried St. Lawrence, and bits of toe-nails which 
they said belonged to other famous saints, penknives and 
boots and girdles which they said belonged to others ; and 
that all these bits of rubbish were called relics, and adored 
by the ignorant people. But, on the other hand, there is no 
doubt, either, that the king's officers and men punished the 
good monks with the bad ; did great injustice ; demolished 
many beautiful things and many valuable libraries ; de- 
stroyed numbers of paintings, stained-glass windows, fine 
pavements, and carvings ; and that the whole court were 
ravenously greedy and rapacious for the division of this great 
spoil among them. The king seems to have grown almost 
mad in the ardor of this pursuit; for he declared Thoras 
a Becket a traitor, though he had been dead so many years, 
and had his body dug up out of his grave. He must have been 
as miraculous as the monks pretended, if they had told the 
truth : for he was found with one head on his shoulders, and 
they had shown another as his undoubted and genuine head 
ever since his death ; it had brought them vast sums of 
money too. The gold and jewels on his shrine filled two > 
great chests, and eight men tottered as they carried them 
away. How rich the monasteries were you may infer from 
the fact, that, when they were all suppressed, one hundred 
and thirty thousand pounds a year — in those days an im- 
mense sum, — came to the crown. 



HENRY TH^Ll 1 ^- 269 

These things were not done without cai nc ' g great dis- 
content among the people. The monks had been good 
landlords and hospitable entertainers of all travellers, and 
had been accustomed to give away a great deal of corn and 
fruit and meat and other things. In those days it was 
difficult to change goods into money, in consequence of the 
roads being very few and very bad, and the carts and wag- 
ons of the worst description; and they must either have 
given away some of the good things they possessed in 
enormous quantities, or have suffered them to spoil and 
moulder. So, many of the people missed what it was more 
agreeable to get idly than to work for ; and the monks, who 
were driven out of their homes and wandered about, en- 
couraged their discontent, and there were, consequently, 
great risings in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. These were 
put down by terrific executions, from which the monks 
themselves did not escape ; and the king went on grunting 
and growling in his own fat way, like a royal pig. 

I have told this story of the religious houses at one time, 
to make it plainer, and to get back to the king's domestic 
affairs. 

The unfortunate Queen Catherine was oy this time dead ; 
and the king was by this time as tired of his second queen 
as he had been of his first. As he had fallen in love with 
Anne when she was in the service of Catherine, so he now 
fell in love with another lady in the service of Anne. See 
how wicked deeds are punished, and how bitterly and self- 
reproachfully the queen must now have thought of her own 
rise to the throne ! The new fancy was a Lady Jane Sey- 
mour ; and the king no sooner set his mind on her, than 
he resolved to have Anne Boleyn's head. So he brought a 
number of charges against Anne, accusing her of dreadful 
crimes which she had never committed, and implicating in 
them her own brother and certain gentlemen in her serv- 
ice, among whom one Nbrris, and Mark Smeaton, are best 
remembered. As the lords and councillors were as afraid of 
the king and as subservient to him as the meanest peasant 
in England was, they brought in Anne Boleyn guilty, and 
the other unfortunate persons accused with her guilty too. 
Those gentlemen died like men, with the exception of 
• Smeaton, who had been tempted by the king into telling 
lies, which he called confessions, and who had expected to 
*)e pardoned; but who, I am very glad to say, was not. 



260 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

There was then only the queen to dispose of. She had 
been surrounded in the tower with women spies, had been 
monstrously persecuted and foully slandered, and had re- 
ceived no justice. But her spirit rose with her afflictions : 
and after having in vain tried to soften the king by writ- 
ing an affecting letter to him which still exists, " from hei 
doleful prison in the tower," she resigned herself to death, 
She said to those about her, very cheerfully, that she had 
heard say the executioner was a good one, and that she had 
a little neck (she laughed and clasped it with her hands as 
she said that), and would soon be out of her pain. And she l| 
was soon out of pain, poor creature ! on the green inside the 
Tower ; and her body was flung in to an old box, and put \ 
away in the ground under the chapel. 

There is a story that the king sat in his palace listening I 
very anxiously for the sound of the cannon which was to , 
announce this new murder ; and that, when he heard it ! 
come booming on the air, he rose up in great spirits, and 
ordered out his dogs to go a-hunting. He was bad enough 
to do it ; but whether he did it or not, it is certain that he 
married Jane Seymour the very next day. 

I have not much pleasure in recording that she lived just 
long enough to give birth to a son, who was christened Ed- 
ward, and then to die of fever; for I cannot but think 
that any woman who married such a ruffian, and knew 
what innocent blood was on his hands, deserved the axe 
that would assuredly have fallen on the neck of Jane Sey- 
mour if she had lived much longer. 

Cranmer had done what he could to save some of the! 
Church property for purposes of religion and education; 
but the great families had been so hungry to get hold of it, 
that very little could be rescued for such objects. Even 
Miles Coverdale, who did the people the inestimable 
service of translating the Bible into English (which the un- 
reformed religion never permitted to be done), was left in 
poverty while the great families clutched the Church lands 
and money. The people had been told, that, when the 
crown came into possession of these funds, it would not be 
necessary to tax them; but they were taxed afresh di- 
rectly afterwards. It was fortunate for them, indeed, that 
so many nobles were so greedy for this wealth ; since, if it 
had remained with the crown, there might have been no 
end to tyranny for hundreds of years. One of the most 



HENRY THE EIGHTH. 261 

ictive writers on the Church's side against the king was a 
nember of his own family, a sort of distant cousin, Regi- 
nald Pole by name, who attacked him in the most violent 
oanner (though he received a pension from him all the 
ime), and fought for the Church with his pen, day and 
light. As he was beyond the king's reach, being in Italy, 
he king politely invited him over to discuss the subject ; but 
ie, knowing better than to come, and wisely staying where 
ie was, the king's rage fell upon his brother, Lord Mon- 
ague, the Marquis of Exeter, and some other gentlemen ; 
vho were tried for high treason in corresponding with him 
nd aiding him, which they probably did, and were all ex- 
uted. The Pope made Reginal Pole a cardinal; but so 
nich against his will, that it is thought he even aspired in 
is own mind to the vacant throne of England, and had 
iopes of marrying the Princess Mary. His being made a 
dgh priest, liowever, put an end to all that. His mother, 
he venerable Countess of Salisbury, who was, unfortu- 
lately for herself, within the tyrant's reach, was the last of 
lis relatives on whom his wrath fell. When she, was told 
o lay her gray head upon the block, she answered the ex- 
cutioner, " No : my head never committed treason, and, 
f you want it, you shall seize it ! " So she ran round and 
ound the scaffold, with the executioner striking at her, and 
ier gray hair bedabbled with blood ; and, even when they 
leld her down upon the block, she moved her head about to 
he last, resolved to be no party to her own barbarous mur- 
er. All this the people bore, as they had borne every 
hing else. 

Indeed, they bore much more ; for the slow fires of 
Smithfield were continually burning, and people were con- 
tantly being roasted to death, — still to show what a good 
Christian the king was. He defied the Pope and his bull, 
finch was now issued, and had come into England ; but he 
turned innumerable people whose only offence was that 
hey differed from the Pope's religious opinions. There was 
. wretched man named Lambert, among others, who was 
ried for this before the king, and with whom six bishops 
rgued, one after another. When he was quite exhausted 
as well he might be, after six bishops), he threw himself 
n the king's mercy; but the king blustered out that he 
lad no mercy for heretics. So he, too, fed the fire. 

All this the people bore, and more than all this yet. The 



262 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

national spirit seems to have been banished from the king, 
dom at this time. The very people who were executed foi 
treason, the very wives and friends of the "bluff" king 
spoke of him on the scaffold as a good prince, and a gentle i 
prince, just as serfs in similar circumstances have been kno.wr. 
to do, under the sultan and bashaws of the East, or undei 
the fierce old tyrants of Russia, who poured boiling and 
freezing water on them alternately, until they died. The 
Parliament were as bad as the rest, and gave the king what-! 
ever he wanted j among other vile accommodations, they 
gave him new powers of murdering, at his will and pleasure, 
any one whom he might choose to call a traitor. But the 
worst measure they passed was an act of six articles, com- 
monly called, at the time, "the whip with six strings," 
which punished offences against the Pope's opinions 
without mercy, and enforced the very worst parts of the 
monkish religion. Cranmer would have modified it, if he 
could ; but, being overborne by the Romish party, had not 
the power. As one of the articles declared that priests! 
should not marry, and as he was married himself, he sent 
his wife and children into Germany, and began to tremble 
at his danger; none the less because he was, and had long 
been, the king's friend. This whip of six strings was made 
under the king's own eye. It should never be forgotten of 
him how cruelly he supported the worst of the Popish doc- ! 
trines when there was nothing to be got by opposing them. 
This amiable monarch now thought of taking another ] 
wife. , He proposed to the French king to have some of the 
ladies of the French court exhibited before him, that he 
might make his royal choice ; but the French king answered 
that he would rather not have his ladies trotted out to he 
shown like horses at a fair. He proposed to the Dowager 
Duchess of Milan, who replied that she might have thought 
of such a match if she had had two heads ; but that, only 
owning one, she must beg to keep it safe. At last Cromwell 
represented that there was a Protestant princess in Ger- 
many, — those who held the reformed religion were called 
Protestants, because their leaders had protested against the 
abuses and impositions of the unreformed church, — named 
Anne of Cleves, who was beautiful, and would answer the 
purpose admirably. The king said, Was she a large woman ? 
because he must have a fat wife. " Oh, yes ! " said Cromwell : 
"she was very large, just the thing." On hearing this, the 



HENRY THE EIGHTH. 203 

king sent over his famous painter, Hans Holbein, to take 
her jwrtrait. Hans made her out to be so good-looking 
that the king was satisfied, and the marriage was arranged. 
But whether anybody had paid Hans to touch up the pic- 
ture, or whether Hans, like one or two other painters, flat- 
tered a princess in the ordinary way of business, I cannot 
say : all I know is, that when Anne came over, and the king 
went to Rochester to meet her, and first saw her without 
her seeing him, he swore she was " a great Flanders mare," 
and said he would never marry her. Being obliged to do 
it, now matters had gone so far, he would not give her the 
presents he had prepared, and would never notice her. He 
never forgave Cromwell his part in the affair. His downfall 
dates from that time. 

It was quickened by his enemies, in the interests of the 
unreformed religion, putting in the king's way, at a state 
dinner, a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, Catherine How- 
ard, a young lady of fascinating manners, though small in 
stature and not particularly beautiful. Falling in love with 
her on the spot, the king soon divorced Anne of Cleves, after 
making her the subject of much brutal talk, on pretence 
that she had been previously betrothed to some one else, — 
which would never do for one of his dignity, — and married 
Catherine. It is probable that on his wedding-day, of all 
days in the year, he sent his faithful Cromwell to the scaf- 
fold, and had his head struck off. He further celebrated 
the occasion by burning at one time, and causing to be 
drawn to the fire on the same hurdles, some Protestant pris- 
oners for denying the Pope's doctrines, and some Roman 
Catholic prisoners for denying his own supremacy. Still the 
people bore it, and not a gentleman in England raised his 
hand. 

But, by a just retribution, it soon came out that Cathe- 
rine Howard, before her marriage, had been really guilty of 
such crimes as the king had falsely attributed to his second 
wife, Anne Boleyn ; so again the "dreadful axe made the 
king a widower, and this queen passed away as so many in 
that reign had passed away before her. As an appropriate 
pursuit under the circumstances, Henry then applied him- 
self to superintending the composition of a religious book, 
called " A Necessary Doctrine for any Christian Man." He 
must have been a little confused in his mind, I think, at 
about this period j for he was so false to himself as to be true 



264 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

to some one, — that some one being Cranmer, whom the 
Duke of Norfolk and others of his enemies tried to ruin, but> 
to whom the king was steadfast, and to whom he one night 
gave his ring, charging him when he should find himself, 
next day, accused of treason, to show it to the council hoard. 
This Cranmer did, to the confusion of his enemies. I sup- 
pose the king thought he might want him a little longer. 

He married yet once more. Yes : strange to say, he found 
in England another woman who would become bis wife; 
anct she was Catherine Parr, widow of Lord Latimer. 
She leaned towards the reformed religion ; and it is some 
comfort to know, that she tormented the king considerably 
by arguing a variety of doctrinal points with him on all pos- 
sible occasions. She had very nearly done this to her own 
destruction. After one of these conversations, the king, in a 
very black mood, actually instructed Gardiner, one of the 
bishops who favored the Popish opinions, to draw a bill of 
accusation against her, which would have inevitably brought 
her to the scaffold where her predecessors had died, but that 
one of her friends picked up the paper of instructions which 
had been dropped in the palace, and gave her timely notice. 
She fell ill with terror ; but managed the king so well when 
he came to entrap her into further statements, — by saying 
that she had only spoken on such points to divert his mind, 
and to get some information from his extraordinary wisdom, 
— that he gave her a kiss, and called her his sweet-heart. 
And when the chancellor came next day, actually to take 
her to the Tower, the king sent him about his business, and 
honored him with the epithets of a beast, a knave, and a 
fool. So near was Catherine Parr to the block, and so nar- 
row was her escape ! 

There was war with Scotland in this reign, and a short, 
clumsy war with France for favoring Scotland; but the 
events at home were so dreadful, and leave such an endur- 
ing stain on the country, that I need say no more of what 
happened abroad. 

A few more horrors, and this reign is over. There was a 
lady, Anne Askew, in Lincolnshire, who inclined to the 
Protestant opinions, and whose husband, being a fierce 
Catholic, turned her out of the house. She came to London, 
and was considered as offending against the six articles, and 
was taken to the Tower, and put upon the rack, — probably 
because it was hoped she might, in her agony, criminate 



HENRY THE EIGHTH. 265 

some obnoxious persons ; if falsely, so much the better. She 
was tortured without uttering a cry, until the lieutenant of 
the Tower would suffer his men to torture 'her no more ; 
and then two priests, who were present, actually pulled off 
their robes, and turned the wheels of the rack with their 
own hands, so rending and twisting and breaking her that 
she was afterwards carried to the fire in a chair. She was 
burned with three others, — a gentleman, a clergyman, and 
a tailor ; and so the world went on. 

Either the king became afraid of the power of the Duke 
of Norfolk, and his son the Earl of Surrey, or they gave him 
some offence ; but he resolved to pull them down, to follow 
all the rest who were gone. The son was tried first, — of 
course for nothing, — and defended himself bravely ; but of 
course he was found guilty, and of course he was executed. 
Then his father was laid hold of, and left for death too. 

But the king himself was left for death by a greater 
King, and the earth was to be rid of him at last. He was 
now a swollen, hideous spectacle, with a great hole in his 
leg, and so odious to every sense that it was dreadful to ap- 
proach him. When he was found to be dying, Cranmer 
was sent for from his palace at Croydon, and came with all 
speed, but found him speechless. Happily, in that hour he 
perished. He was in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and 
thirty-eighth of his reign. 

Henry the Eighth has been favored by some Protestant 
writers, because the Eeformation was achieved in his time. 
But the mighty merit of it lies with other men, and not 
with him ; and it can be rendered none the worse by this 
monster's crimes, and none the better by any defence of 
them. The plain truth is, that he was a most intolerable 
ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood and 
grease upon the history of England. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWAKD THE SIXTH. 

Henry the Eighth had made a will, appointing a 
council of sixteen to govern the kingdom for his son 
while he was under age (he was now only ten years old), 
and another council of twelve to help them. The most 
powerful of the first council was the Earl of Herford, 
the young king's uncle, who lost no time in bringing 
his nephew with great state up to Enfield, and thence 
to the Tower. It was considered at the time a striking 
proof of virtue in the young king that he was sorry 
for his father's death ; but as common subjects have that 
virtue too, sometimes, we will say' no more about it. 

There was a curious part of the late king's will, 
requiring his executors to fulfil whatever promises he 
had made. Some of the court wondering what these 
might be, the Earl of Hertford and the other noblemen 
interested said that they were promises to advance and 
enrich them. ' So the Earl of Hertford made himself 
Duke of Somerset, and made his brother Edward Sey- 
mour a baron ; and there were various similar promotions 
all very agreeable to the parties concerned, and very dutiful, 
no doubt, to the late king's memory. To be more dutiful 
still, they made themselves rich out of" the Church lands, 
and were very comfortable. The new Duke of Somerset 
caused himself to be declared Protector of the kingdom, 
and was, indeed, the king. 

As young Edward the Sixth had been brought up in the 
principles of the Protestant religion, everybody knew that 
they would be maintained. But Cranmer, to whom they 
were chiefly intrusted, advanced them steadily and temper- 
ately. Many superstitious and ridiculous practices were 
stopped ; but practices which w T ere harmless were not inter- 
fered with. 



EDWARD THE SIXTH. 267 

The Duke of Somerset, the Protector, was anxious to have 
the young king engaged in marriage to the young Queen 
of Scotland, in order to prevent that princess from making 
an alliance with any foreign power ; but, as a large party 
in Scotland were unfavorable to this plan, he invaded 
that country. His excuse for doing so was, that the Bor- 
der men — that is, the Scotch who lived in that part of 
the country where England and Scotland joined — troubled 
the English very. much. But there were two sides to this 
question ; for the English Border men troubled the Scotch 
too : and, through many long years, there were perpetual 
Border quarrels, which gave rise to numbers of old tales 
and songs. However, the Protector invaded Scotland ; and 
Arkan, Scottish Regent, with an army twice as large as his, 
advanced to meet him. They encountered on the banks of 
the river Esk, within a few miles of Edinburgh ; and there, 
after a little skirmish, the Protector made such moderate 
proposals, in offering to retire if the Scotch would only 
engage not to marry their princess to any foreign prince, 
that the regent thought the English were afraid. But 
in this he made a horrible mistake ; for the English sol- 
diers on land, and the English sailors on the water, so set 
upon the Scotch, that they broke and fled, and more than 
ten thousand of them were killed. It was a dreadful bat- 
tle, for the fugitives were slain without mercy. The ground 
for four miles, all the way to Edinburgh, was strewn with 
dead men, and with arms and legs and heads. Some hid 
themselves in streams, and were drowned; some threw 
away their armor, and were killed running, almost naked ; 
but in this battle of Pinkey the English lost only two 
or three hundred men. They were much better clothed 
than the Scotch, at the poverty of whose appearance and 
country they were exceedingly astonished. 

A parliament was called when Somerset came back : and 
it repealed the whip with six strings, and did one or 
two other good things ; though it unhappily retained the 
punishment of burning for those people who did not make 
believe to believe, in all religious matters, what the govern- 
ment had declared that they must and should believe. It 
also made a foolish law (meant to put down beggars), 
that any man who lived idly, and loitered about for three 
days together, should be burned with a hot iron, made a 
slave, and wear an iron fetter. But this savage absurdity 



268 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

soon came to an end, and went the way of a great many 
other foolish laws. 

The Protector was now so proud, that he sat in Parlia- 
ment before all the nobles, on the right hand of the throne. 
Many other noblemen, who only wanted to be as proud if 
the}'' could get a chance, became his enemies of course ; 
and it is supposed that he came back suddenly from Scot- 
land because he had received news that his brother, Lord 
Seymour, was becoming dangerous to him. This lord 
was now High Admiral of England; a very handsome 
man, and a great favorite with the court ladies, — even 
with the young Princess Elizabeth, who romped with him 
a little more than young princesses in these times do 
with any one. He had married Catherine Parr, the late 
king's widow, who was now dead ; and, to strengthen his 
power, he secretly supplied the young king with money. 
He may even have engaged with some of his brother's 
enemies in a plot to carry the boy off. On these and 
other accusations, at any rate, he was confined in the 
Tower, impeached, and found guilty; his own brother's 
name being — unnatural and sad to tell — the first signed 
to the warrant for his execution. He was executed on 
Tower Hill, and died denying his treason. One of his 
last proceedings in this world was to write two letters, 
one to the Princess Elizabeth, and one to the princess 
Mary, which a servant of his took charge of, and con- 
cealed in his shoe. These letters are supposed to have 
urged them against his brother, and to revenge his 
death. What they truly contained is not known ; but 
there is doubt that he had, at one time, obtained great 
influence over the Princess Elizabeth. 

All this while the Protestant religion was making prog- 
ress. The images which the people had gradually come 
to worship were removed from the churches; the people 
were informed that they need not confess themselves to 
priests unless they chose ; a common prayer-book was 
drawn up in the English language, which all could under- 
stand ; and many other improvements were made, — still 
moderately; for Cranmer was a very moderate man, and 
even restrained the Protestant clergy from violently abus- 
ing the unreformed religion, as they very often did, and 
which was not a good example. But the people were at 
this time in great distress. The rapacious nobility who 



EDWARD THE SIXTH. 209 

had come into possession of the Church lands were very- 
bad landlords. They enclosed great quantities of ground 
for the feeding of sheep, which was then more profitable 
than the growing of corps ; and this increased the general 
distress. So the people, who still understood little of what 
was going on about them, and still readily believed what 
the homeless monks told them, — many of whom had been 
their good friends in their better days, — took it into their 
heads that all this was owing to the reformed religion, and 
therefore rose in many parts of the country. 

The most powerful risings were in Devonshire and Nor- 
folk. In Devonshire, the rebellion was so strong that ten 
thousand men united within a few days, and even laid 
siege to Exeter. But Lord Russell, coming to the 
assistance of the citizens who defended that town, defeated 
the rebels ; and not only hanged the mayor of one place, 
but hanged the vicar of another from his own church 
steeple. What with hanging and killing by the sword, 
four thousand of the rebels are supposed to have fallen in 
that one county. In Norfolk (where the rising was more 
against the enclosure of open lands than against the 
reformed religion), the popular leader was a man named 
Robert Ket, a tanner of Wymondham. The mob were, 
in the first instance, excited against the tanner by one 
John Flowerdew, a gentleman who owed him a grudge ; 
but the tanner was more than a match for the gentleman, 
since he soon got the people on his side r and established 
himself near Norwich, with quite an army. There was a 
large oak-tree in that place, on a spot called Moushold Hill, 
which Ket named the Tree of Reformation ; and under its 
green boughs, he and his men sat in the midsummer 
weather, holding courts of justice, and debating affairs of 
state. They were even impartial enough to allow some 
rather tiresome public speakers to get up into this Tree of 
Reformation, and point out their errors to them in long dis- 
courses, while they lay listening (not always without some 
grumbling and growling) in the shade below. At last, one 
sunny July day, a herald appeared below the tree, and pro- 
claimed Ket and all his men traitors, unless from that 
moment they dispersed and went home : in which case 
they were to receive a pardon. But Ket and his men 
made light of the herald, and became stronger than ever, 
until the Earl of Warwick went after them with a sufficient 

23* 



270 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 

force, and cut them all to pieces. A few were hanged, 
drawn, and quartered as traitors ; and their limbs were sent 
into various country places to be a terror to the people. 
Nine of them were hanged upon nine green branches of 
the Oak of Reformation ; and so for the time that tree may- 
be said to have withered away. 

The Protector, though a naughty man, had compassion 
for the real distresses of the common people, and a sincere 
desire to help them. But he was too proud and too high 
in degree to hold even their favor steadily ; and many of 
the nobles always envied and hated him, because they were 
as proud and not as high as he. He was at this time build- 
ing a great palace in the Strand : to get the stone for which 
he blew up church-steeples with gunpowder, and pulled 
down bishops' houses : thus making himself still more dis- 
liked. At length, his principal enemy, the Earl of War- 
wick, — Dudley by name, and the son of that Dudley who 
had made himself so odious with Empson, in the reign of 
Henry the Seventh, — joined with seven other members of 
the council against him, formed a separate council ; and, 
become stronger in a few days, sent him to the Tower 
under twenty-nine articles of accusation. After being 
sentenced by the counsel to the forfeiture of all his offices 
and lands, he was liberated and pardoned on making a very 
humble submission. He was even taken back into the 
council again, after having suffered this fall, and married 
his daughter, Lady Anne Seymour, to Warwick's eldest 
son. But such a reconciliation was little likely to last, and 
did not outlive a year. Warwick, "having got himself made 
Duke of Northumberland, and having advanced the more 
important of his friends, then finished the history by caus- 
ing the Duke of Somerset and his friend Lord Grey, and 
others, to be arrested for treason, in having conspired to 
seize and dethrone the king. They were also accused of 
having intended to seize the new Duke of Northumberland, 
with his friends, Lord Northampton and Lord Pem- 
broke, to murder them if they found need, and to raise 
the city to revolt. All this the fallen Protector positively 
denied ; except that he confessed to having spoken of the 
murder of those three noblemen, but having never designed 
it. He was acquitted of the charge of treason, and found 
guilty of the other charges ; so when the people — who 
remembered his having been their friend, now that he was 



EDWARD THE SIXTH. 271 

disgraced and in danger — saw him come out from his trial 
with the axe turned from him, they thought he was alto- 
gether acquitted, and set up a loud shout of joy. 

But the Duke of Somerset was ordered to be beheaded on 
Tower Hill, at eight o'clock in the morning, and proclama- 
tions were issued bidding the citizens keep at home until 
after ten. They filled the streets, however, and crowded 
the place of execution as soon as it was light ; and, with 
sad faces and sad hearts, saw the once powerful protector 
ascend the scaffold to lay his head upon the dreadful block. 
While he was yet saying his last words to them with manly 
courage, and telling them in particular how it comforted 
him, at that pass, to have assisted in reforming the national 
religion, a member of the council was seen riding up on 
horseback. They again thought that the duke was saved 
by his bringing a reprieve, and again shouted for joy. But 
the duke himself told them they were>> mistaken, and laid 
down his head and had it struck off at a blow. 

Many of the bystanders rushed forward, and steeped their 
handkerchiefs in his blood, as a mark of their affection. 
He had, indeed, been capable of many good acts, and one 
of them was discovered after he was no more. The Bishop 
of Durham, a very good man, had been informed against 
to the council, when the duke was in power, as having 
answered a treacherous letter proposing a rebellion against 
the reformed religion. As the answer could not be found, 
he could not be declared guilty; but it was now discovered, 
hidden by the duke himself among some private papers, in 
his regard for that good man. The bishop lost his office, 
and was deprived of his possessions. 

It is not very pleasant to know that while his uncle lay 
in prison under sentence of death, the young king was 
being vastly entertained by plays and dances and sham 
fights : but there is no doubt of it, for he kept a journal 
himself! It is pleasanter to know that not a single Roman 
Catholic was burnt in this reign for holding that religion ; 
though two wretched victims suffered for heresy. One, a 
woman named Joan Bocher, for professing some opinions 
that even she could only explain in unintelligible jargon. 
The other, a Dutchman, named Von Paris, who practised 
as a surgeon in London. Edward was, to his credit, exceed- 
ingly unwilling to sign the warrant for the woman's execu- 
tion : shedding tears before he did so, and telling Cranmer, 



272 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

who urged him to do it (though Cranmer really would have 
spared the woman at first, but for her own determined ob- 
stinacy), that the guilt was not his, but that of the man 
who so strongly urged the dreadful act. We shall see, too 
soon, whether the time ever came when Cranmer is likely 
to have remembered this with sorrow and remorse. 

Cranmer and Eidley (at first Bishop of Rochester, and 
afterwards Bishop of London) were the most powerful of 
the clergy of this reign. Others were imprisoned and de- 
prived of their property for still adhering to the unreformed 
religion ; the most important among whom were Gardiner, 
Bishop of Winchester, Heath, Bishop of Worcester, Day, 
Bishop of Chichester, and Bonner that Bishop of London 
who was superseded by Eidley. The Princess Mary, who 
inherited her mother's gloomy temper, and hated the re- 
formed religion as connected with her mother's wrongs and 
sorrows, — she knew nothing else about it, always refusing 
to read a single book in which it was truly described, — held 
by the unreformed religion too, and was the only person in 
the kingdom for whom the old mass was allowed to be per- 
formed ; nor would the young king have made that excep- 
tion even in her favor, but for the strong persuasions of 
Cranmer and Eidley. He always viewed it with horror ; 
and when he fell into a sickly condition, after having been 
very ill, first of the measles and then of the small-pox, he 
was greatly troubled in mind to think that if he died, and 
she, the next heir to the throne, succeeded, the Eoman 
Catholic religion would be set up again. 

This uneasiness, the Duke of Northumberland was not 
slow to encourage : for if the Princess Mary came to the 
throne, he, who had taken part with the Protestants, was 
sure to be disgraced. Now, the Duchess of Suffolk was 
descended from King Henry the Seventh ; and if she re- 
signed what little or no right she had, in favor of her 
daughter, Lady Jane Grey, that would be the succession 
to promote the Duke's greatness ; because Lord Guilford 
Dudley, one of his sons, was, at this very time, newly 
married to her. So he worked upon the king's fears, and 
persuaded him to set aside both the Princess Mary and the 
Princess Elizabeth, and assert his right to appoint his suc- 
cessor. Accordingly the young king handed to the crown 
lawyers a writing signed half a dozen times over by him- 
self, appointing Lady Jane Grey to succeed to the crown, 



EDWARD THE SIXTH. 273 

and requiring them to have his will made out according to 
law. They were much against it at first, and told the king 
so; but the Duke of Northumberland being so violent 
about it that the lawyers even expected him to beat them, 
and hotly declaring that, stripped to his shirt, he would 
fight any man in such a quarrel, they yielded. Cranmer 
also at first hesitated ; pleading that he had sworn to main- 
tain the succession of the crown to the Princess Mary ; but 
he was a weak man in his resolutions, and afterwards signed 
the document with the rest of the council. 

It was completed none to soon; for Edward was now 
sinking in a rapid decline ; and, by way of making him 
better, they handed him over to a woman-doctor who pre- 
tended to be able to cure it. He speedily got worse. On 
the 6th of July, in the year 1553, he died, very peaceably 
and piously, praying God, with his last breath, to protect the 
reformed religion. 

This king died in the sixteenth year of his age, and in 
the seventh of his reign. It is difficult to judge what the 
character of one so young might afterwards have become 
among so many bad, ambitious, quarrelling nobles. But he 
was an amiable boy, of very good abilities, and had nothing 
coarse or cruel or brutal in his disposition, which in the 
son of such a faiher is rather surprising. 



274 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XXX. 



ENGLAND UNDER MARY. 



The Duke of Northumberland was very anxious to keep the 
young king's death a secret, in order that he might get the 
two princesses into his power. But the Princess Mary, 
being informed of that event as she was on her way to 
London to see her sick brother, turned her horse's head, and 
rode away into Norfolk. The Earl of Arundel was her 
friend ; and it was he who sent her warning of what had 
happened. 

As the secret could not be kept, the Duke of Northum- 
berland and the council sent for the Lord Mayor of London 
and some of the aldermen, and made a merit of telling it 
to them. Then they made it known to the people, and set 
off to inform Lady Jane Grey that she was#to be queen. 

She was a pretty girl of only sixteen, and was amiable, 
learned, and clever. When the' lords who came to her fell 
on their knees before her, and told her what tidings they 
brought, she was so astonished that she fainted. On re- 
covering, she expressed her sorrow for the young king's 
death, and said that she knew she was unfit to govern the 
kingdom ; but that, if she must be queen, she prayed God to 
direct her. She was then at Sion House, near Brentford ; 
and the lords took her down the river in state to the Tower, 
that she might remain there (as the custom was) until she 
was crowned. But the people were not at all favorable to 
Lady Jane, considering that the right to be queen was 
Mary's, and greatly disliking the Duke of Northumberland. 
They were not put into a better humor by the duke's caus- 
ing a vintner's servant, one Gabriel Pot, to be taken up for 
expressing his dissatisfaction among the crowd, and to have 
his ears nailed to the pillory, and cut off. Some powerful 
men among the nobility declared on Mary's side. They 
raised troops to support her cause, had her proclaimed queen 



MARY. 275 

at Norwich, and gathered around her at the castle of Fram- 
lingham, which belonged to the Duke of Norfolk. For 
she was hot considered so safe as yet, but that it was best 
to keep her in a castle on the sea-coast, from whence she 
might be sent abroad if necessary. 

The council would have despatched Lady Jane's father, 
the Duke of Suffolk, as the general of the army against 
this force; but as Lady Jane implored that her father 
might remain with her, and as he was known to be but a 
weak man, they told the Duke of Northumberland that he 
must take the command himself. He was not very ready 
to do so, as he mistrusted the council much ; but there was 
no help for it, and he set forth with a heavy heart, observ- 
ing to a lord who rode beside him through Shoreditch at 
the head of the troops, that, although the people pressed in 
great numbers to look at them, they were terribly silent. 

And his fears for himself turned out to be well founded. 
While he was waiting at Cambridge for further help from 
the council, the council took it into their heads to turn their 
backs on Lady Jane's cause, and to take up the Princess 
Mary's. This was chiefly owing to the before-mentioned 
Earl of Arundel, who represented to the lord mayor and 
aldermen, in a second interview with those sagacious per- 
sons, that as for himself, he did not perceive the reformed 
religion to be in much danger, — which Lord Pembroke 
backed by flourishing his sword as another kind of per- 
suasion. The lord mayor and aldermen, thus enlightened, 
said there could be no doubt that the Princess Mary ought 
to be queen. So she was proclaimed at the Cross by St. 
Paul's ; and barrels of wine were given to the people, and 
they got very drunk, and danced round blazing bonfires, 
little thinking, poor wretches, what other bonfires would 
soon be blazing in Queen Mary's name. 

After a ten-days' dream of royalty, Lady Jane Grey re- 
signed the crown with great willingness, saying that she 
had only accepted it in obedience to her father and mother ; 
and went gladly back to her pleasant house by the river, 
and her books. Mary then came on towards London ; and 
at. Wanstead, in Essex, was joined by her half-sister, the 
Princess Elizabeth. They passed through the streets of 
London to the Tower; and there the new queen met some 
eminent prisoners then confined in it, kissed them, and gave 
them their liberty. Among these was that Gardiner, 



276 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Bishop of Winchester, who had been imprisoned in the last 
reign for holding to the unreformed religion. Him she 
soon made chancellor. 

The Duke of Northumberland had been taken prisoner, 
and, together with his son and five others, was quickly 
brought before the council. He, not unnaturally, asked 
that council, in his defence, whether it was treason to obey 
orders that had been issued under the great seal ; and, if it 
were, whether they, who had obeyed them too, ought to be 
his judges ? But they made light of these points ; and, 
being resolved to have him out of the way, soon sentenced 
him to death. He had risen into power upon the death of 
another man, and made but a poor show (as might be ex- 
pected) when he himself lay low. He entreated Gardiner 
to let him live, if it were only in a mouse's hole ; and, when 
he ascended the scaffold to be beheaded on Tower Hill, ad- 
dressed the people in a miserable way, saying that he had 
been incited by others, and exhorting them to return to the 
unreformed religion, which he told them was his faith. 
There seems reason to suppose that he expected a pardon 
even then, in return for this confession ; but it matters little 
whether he did or not. His head was struck off. 

Mary was now crowned queen. She was thirty-seven 
years of age, short and thin, wrinkled in the face, and very 
unhealthy. But she had a great liking for show and for 
bright colors, and all the ladies of her court were magnifi- 
cently dressed. She had a great liking, too, for old customs, 
without much sense in them ; and she was oiled in the old- 
est way, and blessed in the oldest way, and done all manner 
of things to in the oldest way, at her coronation. I hope 
they did her good. 

She soon began to show her desire to put down the re- 
formed religion, and put up the unreformed one : though it 
was dangerous work as yet, the people being something 
wiser than they used to be. They even cast a shower of 
stones — and among them a dagger — at one of the royal 
chaplains who attacked the reformed religion in a public 
sermon. But the queen and her priests went steadily on. 
Ridley, the powerful bishop of the last reign, was seized 
and sent to the tower. Latimer,* also celebrated among 
the clergy of the last reign, was likewise sent to the Tower, 
and Cranmer speedily followed. Latimer was an aged man ; 
and, as his guards took him through Smithfield, he looked 



MARY. 277 

round it, and said, "This is a place that hath long groaned 
for me." For he knew well what kind of bonfires would 
soon be burning. Nor was the knowledge confined to him. 
The prisons were fast filled with the chief Protestants, who 
were there left rotting in darkness, hunger, dirt, and sepa- 
ration from their friends ; many, who had time left them 
for escape, fled from the kingdom, and the dullest of the 
people began now to see what was coming. 

It came on fast. A parliament was got together ; not 
without strong suspicion of unfairness ; and they annulled 
the divorce, formerly pronounced by Cranmer between the 
queen's mother and King Henry the Eighth, and unmade 
all the laws on the subject of religion that had been made 
in the last King Edward's reign. They began their pro- 
ceedings, in violation of the law, by having the old mass 
said before them in Latin, and by turning out a bishop who 
would not kneel down. They also declared guilty of treason 
Lady Jane Grey, for aspiring to the crown ; her husband, 
for being her husband ; and Cranmer, for not believing in 
the mass aforesaid. They then prayed the queen gracious- 
ly to choose a husband for herself, as soon as might be. 

Now, the question who should be the queen's husband 
had given rise to a great- deal of discussion, and to several 
contending parties. Some said Cardinal Pole was the man; 
but the queen was of opinion that he was not the man, 
he being too old and too much of a student. Others said 
that the gallant young Courtenay, whom the queen had 
made Earl of Devonshire, was the man, — and the queen 
thought so too, for a while, but she changed her mind. At 
last it appeared that Philip, Prince of Spain, was cer- 
tainly the man, — though certainly not the people's man ; 
for they detested the idea of such a marriage from the be- 
ginning to the end, and murmured that the Spaniard would 
establish in England, by the aid of foreign soldiers, the 
worst abuses of the Popish religion, and even the terrible 
Inquisition itself. 

These discontents gave rise to a conspiracy for marrying 
young Courtenay to the Princess Elizabeth, and setting 
them up, with popular tumults all over the kingdom, against 
the queen. This was discovered in time by Gardiner ; but 
in Kent, the old bold county, the people rose in their old 
bold way. Sir Thomas Wyat, a man of great daring, 
was their leader. He raised his standard at Maidstone, 

24 



278 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

marched on to Rochester, established himself in the old 
castle there, and prepared to hold out against the Duke of 
Norfolk, who came against him with a party of the queen's 
guards and a body of five hundred London men. The Lon- 
don men, however, were all for Elizabeth, and not at all for 
Mary. They declared, under the castle walls, for Wyat ; 
the duke retreated ; and Wyat came on to Deptford, at the 
head of fifteen thousand men. 

But these, in their turn, fell away. When he came to 
Southwark, there were only two thousand left. Not dismayed 
by finding the London citizens in arms, and the guns at 
the Tower ready to oppose his crossing the river there, Wyat 
led them off to Kingston-upon-Thames, intending to cross 
the bridge that he knew to be in that place, and so to work 
his way round to Ludgate, one of the old gates of the city. 
He found the bridge broken down, but mended it, came 
across, and bravely fought his way up Fleet street to Lud- 
gate Hill. Finding the gate closed against him, he fought 
his way back again, sword in hand, to Temple Bar. Here, 
being overpowered, he surrendered himself, and three or 
four hundred of his men were taken, besides a hundred 
killed. Wyat, in a moment of weakness (and perhaps of 
torture), was afterwards made to accuse the Princess Eliza- 
beth as his accomplice to some very small extent. But his 
manhood soon returned to him, and he refused to save his 
life by making any more false confessions. He was quar- 
tered and distributed in the usual brutal way, and from 
fifty to a hundred of his followers were hanged. The rest 
were led out, with halters round their necks, to be pardoned, 
and to make a parade of crying out, "God save Queen 
Mary!" 

In the danger of this rebellion, the queen showed herself 
to be a woman of courage and spirit. She disdained to re- 
treat to any place of safety, and went down to the Guildhall, 
sceptre in hand, and made a gallant speech to the lord 
mayor and citizens. But on the day after Wyat's defeat 
she did the most cruel act, even of her cruel reign, in sign- 
ing the death warrant for the execution of Lady Jane 
Grey. 

They tried to persuade Lady Jane to accept the uni- 
formed religion ; but she steadily refused. On the morn- 
ing when she was to die, she saw from her window the 
bleeding and headless body of her husband brought back in 




JANE GREY SEEING FROM THE -WINDOW THE BODY OF HER TTFSBAND. 



MARY. 279 

a cart from the scaffold on Tower Hill, where he had laid 
down his life. But, as she had declined to see him before 
his execution, lest she should be overpowered and not make 
a good end, so she even now showed a constancy and calm- 
ness that will never be forgotten. She came up to the scaf- 
fold with a firm step and a quiet face, and addressed the 
by-standers in a steady voice. They were not numerous ; 
for she was too young, too innocent and fair, to be murdered 
before the people on Tower Hill, as her husband had just 
been : so the place of her execution was within the ToM r er 
itself. She said that she had done an unlawful act in tak- 
ing what was Queen Mary's right ; but that she had done 
so with no bad intent, and that she died a humble Christian. 
She begged the executioner to despatch her quickly, and 
she asked him, " Will you take my head off before I lay me 
down ? " He answered, " No, madam," and then she was 
very quiet while they bandaged her eyes. Being blinded, 
and unable to see the block on which she was to lay her 
young head, she was seen to feel about for it with her 
hands, and was heard to say, confused, " Oh, what shall I 
do? Where is it?" Then they guided her to the right 
place, and the executioner struck off her head. You know 
too well, now,*what dreadful deeds the executioner did in 
England, through many, many years, and how his axe de- 
scended on the hateful block through the necks of some of 
the bravest, wisest, and best in the land. But it never 
struck so cruel and so vile a blow as this. 

The father of Lady Jane soon followed, but was little 
pitied. Queen Mary's next object was to lay hold of Eliza- 
beth, and this was pursued with great eagerness. Eive 
hundred men were sent to her retired house at Ashridge, 
by Berkhampstead, with orders to bring her up, alive or 
dead. • They got there at ten at night, when she was sick 
in bed. But their leaders followed her lady into her 
bedchamber, whence she was brought out betimes next morn- 
ing, and put into a litter to be conveyed to London. She 
was so weak and ill that she was five days on the road : 
still, she was so resolved to be seen by the people that she 
had the curtains of the litter opened ; and so, very pale and 
sickly, passed through the streets. She wrote to her sister, 
saying she was innocent of any crime, and asking why she 
was made a prisoner: but she got no answer, and was 
ordered to the Tower. They took her in by the Traitor's 



280 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Gate, to which she objected, but in vain. One of the lords 
who conveyed her offered to cover her with his cloak, as it 
was raining ; but she put it away from her, proudly and 
scornfully, and passed into the Tower, and sat down in a 
court-yard on a stone. They besought her to come in out 
of the wet ; but she answered that it was better sitting 
there than in a worse place. At length she went to her 
apartment, where she was kept a prisoner, though not so 
close a prisoner as at Woodstock, whither she was after- 
wards removed, and where she is said to have one day 
envied a milkmaid whom she heard singing in the sunshine 
as she went through the green fields. Gardiner, than whom 
there were not many worse men among the fierce and sullen 
priests, cared little to keep secret his stern desire for her 
death; being used to say that it was of little service to 
shake off the leaves, and lop the branches of the tree of 
heresy, if its root, the hope of heretics, were left. He 
failed, however, in his benevolent design. Elizabeth was 
at length released ; and Hatfield House was assigned to 
her as a residence, under the care of one Sir Thomas 
Pope. 

It would seem that Philip, the Prince of Spain, was a 
main cause of this change in Elizabeth's fortunes. He was 
not an amiable man, being, on the contrary, proud, over- 
bearing, and gloomy ; but he and the Spanish lords who 
came over with him assuredly did discountenance the idea 
of doing any violence to the princess. It may have been 
mere prudence, but we will hope it was manhood and honor. 
The queen had been expecting her husband with great im- 
patience ; and at length he came, to her great joy, though 
he never cared much for her. They were married by Gar- 
diner, at Winchester, and there was more holiday-making 
among the people ; but they had their old distrust of this 
Spanish marriage, in which even the Parliament shared. 
Though the members of that parliament were far from 
honest, and were strongly suspected to have been bought 
with Spanish money, they would pass no bill to . enable the 
queen to set aside the Princess Elizabeth, and appoint her 
own successor. 

Although Gardiner failed in this object, as well as in the 
darker one of bringing the princess to the scaffold, he went 
on at a great pace in the revival of the unreformed reli- 
gion. A new parliament was packed, in which there were 



MARY. 281 

no Protestants. Preparations were made to receive Cardinal 
Pole in England as the Pope's messenger, bringing his holy- 
declaration that all the nobility who had acquired Church 
property should keep it; which was done to enlist their 
selfish interest on the Pope's side. Then a great scene 
was enacted, which was the triumph of the queen's plans. 
Cardinal Pole arrived in great splendor and dignity, and 
was received with great pomp. The Parliament joined in 
a petition expressive of their sorrow at the change in the 
national religion, and praying him to receive the country 
again into the Popish Church. With the queen sitting on 
her throne, and the king on one side of her, and the cardi- 
nal on the other, and the Parliament present, Gardiner 
read the petition aloud. The cardinal then made a great 
speech, and was so obliging as to say that all was forgotten 
and forgiven, and that the kingdom was solemnly made 
Roman Catholic again. 

Every thing was now ready for the lighting of the terri- 
ble bonfires. The queen having declared to the council, in 
writing, that she would wish none of her subjects to be 
burnt without some of the council being present, and that 
she would particularly wish there to be good sermons at 
all burnings, the council knew pretty well what was to be 
done next. So after the cardinal had blessed all the bishops 
as a preface to the burnings, the Chancellor Gardiner opened 
a high court at St. Mary Overy, on the Southwark-side of 
London Bridge, for the trial of heretics. Here two of the 
late Protestant clergymen, Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, 
and Rogers, a prebendary of St. Paul's, were brought to 
be tried. Hooper was tried first for being married, though 
a priest, and for not believing in the mass. He admitted 
both of these accusations, and said that the mass was a 
wicked imposition. Then they tried Rogers, who said the 
same. Next morning the two were brought up to be sen- 
tenced ; and then Rogers said that his poor wife, being a 
German woman and a stranger in the land, he hoped might 
be allowed to come to speak to him before he died. To this 
the inhuman Gardiner replied, that she was not his wife. 
" Yea, but she is, my lord," said Rogers : " she hath been 
my wife these eighteen years." His request was still refused, 
and they were both sent to Newgate ; all those who stood 
in the streets to sell things being ordered to put out their 
lights that the people might not see them. But the people 

24* 



282 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

stood at their doors with candles in their hands, and prayed 
for them as they went by. Soon afterwards Rogers was 
taken out of jail to be burnt in Smithfield ; and, in the 
crowd as he went along, he saw his poor wife and his ten 
children, of whom the youngest was a little bady. And so 
he was burnt to death. 

The next day Hooper, who was to be burnt at Gloucester, 
was brought out to take his last journey, and was made to 
wear a hood over his face that he might not be known by 
the people. But they did know him for all that, down in 
his own part of the country ; and when he came near Glou- 
cester, they lined the road, making prayers and lamenta- 
tions. His guards took ]|im to a lodging, where he slept 
soundly all night. At nine o'clock next morning, he was 
brought forth leaning on a staff; for he had taken cold in 
prison and was infirm. The iron stake, and the iron chain 
which was to bind him to it, were fixed up near a great 
elm-tree, in a pleasant open place before the cathedral, 
where, on peaceful Sundays, he had been accustomed to 
preach and to pray when he was Bishop of Gloucester. 
This tree, which had no leaves then, it being February, was 
filled with people; and the priests of Gloucester College 
were looking complacently on from a window ; and there 
was a great concourse of spectators in every spot from 
which a glimpse of the dreadful sight could be beheld. 
When the old man kneeled down on the small platform at 
the foot of the stake, and prayed aloud, the nearest people 
were observed to be so attentive to his prayers that they 
were ordered to stand farther back ; for it did not suit the 
Eomish Church to have those Protestant words heard. 
His prayers concluded, he went up to the stake, and was 
stripped to his shirt, and chained ready for the fire. One 
of his guards had such compassion on him, that, to shorten 
his agonies, he tied some packets of gunpowder about him. 
Then they heaped up wood and straw and reeds, and set 
them all alight. But unhappily the wood was green and 
damp, and there was a wind blowing that blew what flame 
there was away. Thus, through three-quarters of an hour, 
the good old man was scorched and roasted and smoked, as the 
fire rose and sank ; and all that time they saw him, as he 
burned, moving his lips in prayer, and beating his breast 
with one hand, even after the other was burnt away and 
had fallen off. 



MARY. 283 

Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were taken to Oxford to 
dispute with a commission of priests and doctors about the 
mass. They were shamefully treated ; and it is recorded 
that the Oxford scholars hissed and howled and groaned, 
and misconducted themselves in any thing but a scholarly 
way. The prisoners were taken back to jail, and afterwards 
tried in St. Mary's Church. They were all found guilty. 
On the 16th of the month of October, Ridley and Latimer 
were brought out to make another of the dreadful bon- 
fires. 

The scene of the suffering of these two good Protestant 
men was in the city ditch, near Baliol College. On coming 
to the dreadful spot, they kissed the stakes, and then em- 
braced each other. And then a learned doctor got up into 
a pulpit which was placed there, and preached a sermon 
from the text, " Though I give my body to be burned, and 
have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." When you 
think of the charity of burning men alive, you may imagine 
that this learned doctor had a rather brazen face. Ridley 
would have answered his sermon when it came to an end, 
but was not allowed. When Latimer was stripped, it ap- 
peared that he had dressed himself, under his other clothes, 
in a new shroud; and, as he stood in it before all the 
people, it was noted of him, and long remembered, that, 
whereas he had been stooping and feeble but a few minutes 
before, he now stood upright and handsome, in the knowledge 
that he was dying for a just and a great cause. Ridley's 
brother-in-law was there with bags of gunpowder; and, 
when they were both chained up, he tied them round their 
bodies. Then a light was thrown upon the pile to fire it. 
"Be of good comfort, Master Ridley," said Latimer at that 
awful moment, "and play the man! We shall this day 
light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust 
shall never be put out." And then he was seen to make 
motions with his hands as if he were washing them in the 
flames, and to stroke his aged face with them, and was 
heard to cry, " Father of Heaven ! receive my soul." He 
died quickly ; but the fire, after having burned the legs of 
Ridley, sunk. There he lingered, chained to the iron post, 
and crying, " Oh, I cannot burn ! Ob, for Christ's sake, let 
the fire come unto me ! " And still, when his brother-in- 
law had heaped on more wood, he was heard through the 
blinding smoke, still dismally crying, " Oh, I cannot burn, 



284 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

I cannot burn ! " At last the gunpowder caught fire, and 
ended his miseries. 

Five days after this fearful scene, Gardiner went to his 
tremendous account before God, for the cruelties he had so 
much assisted in committing. 

Cranmer remained still alive and in prison. He was 
brought out again in February, for more examining and 
trying, by Bonner, Bishop of London, — another man of 
blood, who had succeeded to Gardiner's work, even in his 
lifetime, when Gardiner was tired of it. Cranmer was now 
degraded as a priest, and left for death : but, if the que*en 
hated any one on earth, she hated him ; and it was resolved 
that he should be ruined and disgraced to the utmost. 
There is no doubt that the queen and her husband person- 
ally urged on these deeds, because they wrote to the coun- 
cil, urging them to be active in the kindling of the fearful 
fires. As Cranmer was known not to be a firm man, a plan 
was laid for surrounding him with artful people, and indu- 
cing him to recant to the unreformed religion. Deans and 
friars visited him, played at bowls with him, showed him 
various attentions, talked persuasively with him, gave him 
money for his prison comforts, and induced him to sign, 1 
fear, as many as six recantations. But when, after all, he 
was taken out to be burnt, he was nobly true to his better 
self, and made a glorious end. 

After prayers and a sermon, Dr. Cole, the preacher of the 
day (who had been one of the artful priests about Cranmer 
in prison), required him to make a public confession of his 
faith before the people. This Cole did, expecting that lie 
would declare himself a Eoman Catholic. " I will make a 
profession of my faith," said Cranmer, " and with a good 
will too." 

Then he arose before them all, and took from the sleeve 
of his robe a written prayer, and read it aloud. That done, 
he knelt and said the Lord's Prayer, all the people joining ; 
and then he arose again, and told them that he believed in 
the Bible ; and that in what he had lately written, he had 
written what was not the truth ; and that, because his right 
hand had signed those papers, he would burn his right hand 
first when he came to the fire. As for the Pope, he did re- 
fuse him and denounce him, as the enemy of Heaven. Here- 
upon the pious Dr. Cole cried out to the guards to stop that 
heretic's mouth, and take him away. 



MARY. 285 

So they took him away, and chained him to the stake, 
vhere he hastily took off his own clothes to make ready for 
he flames. And he stood before the people with a bald head 
md a white and flowing beard. He was so firm now, when the 
vorst was come, that he again declared against his recanta- 
ion, and was so impressive and so undismayed, that a cer- 
ain lord, who was one of the directors of the execution, 
:alled out to his men to make haste. When the fire was 
ighted, Cranmer, true to his latest word, stretched out his 
•ight hand, and crying out, " This hand hath offended ! " 
leld it among the flames, until it blazed and burned away, 
lis heart was found entire among his ashes, and he left at 
ast a memorable name in English history. Cardinal Pole 
celebrated the day by saying his first mass ; and next day 
ie was made Archbishop of Canterbury in Cranmer's place. 
i The queen's husband, who was now mostly abroad in his 
>wn dominions, and generally made a coarse jest of her to 
ais more familiar courtiers, was at war with France, and 
lame over to- seek the assistance of England. England was 
/ery unwilling to engage in a French war for his sake ; 
jut it happened that the King of France, at this very time, 
lided a descent upon the English coast. Hence, war was 
ieclared, greatly to Philip's satisfaction ; and the queen 
raised a sum of money with which to carry it on, by every 
injustifiable means in her power. It met with no profitable 
return ; for the French Duke of Guise surprised Calais, and 
;he English sustained a complete defeat. The losses they 
met with in France greatly mortified the national pride, 
and the queen never recovered the blow. 

There was a bad fever raging in England at this time ; 
and I am glad to write that the queen took it, and the 
hour of her death came. "When I am dead, and my 
body is opened," she said to those around her, , " ye 
shall find Calais written on my heart." I should have 
thought, if any thing were written on it, they would have 
found the words, — Jane Grey, Hooper, Rogers, Rid- 
ley, Latimer, Cranmer, and three hundred peo- 
ple BURNT ALIVE WITHIN FOUR YEARS OF MY WICKED 
REIGN, INCLUDING- SIXTY WOMEN AND FORTY LITTLE 

children. But it is enough that their deaths were writ- 
ten in heaven. 

The queen died on the 17th of November, 1558, after 
reigning not quite five years and a half, and in the forty- 



286 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

fourth year of her age. Cardinal Pope died of the sam 
fever next day. 

As Bloody Queen Mary, this woman has hecom 
famous ; and as Bloody Queen Mary she will ever be justl 
remembered with horror and detestation in Great Britaii 
Her memory has been held in such abhorrence, that som 
writers have arisen in later years to take her part, and t 
show that she was, upon the whole, quite an amiable an 
cheerful sovereign ! " By their fruits ye shall know them, : 
said our Saviour. The stake and the ure were the fruit 
of this reign, and you will judge this queen by nothin 
else. 






ELIZABETH. 287 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

ENGLAND UNDER ELIZABETH. 

There was great rejoicing all over the land when the 
lords of the council went down to Hatfield to hail the 
Princess Elizabeth as the new queen of England. Weary 
of the barbarities of Mary's reign, the people looked with 
hope and gladness to the new sovereign. The nation 
seemed to wake from a horrible dream ; and heaven, so 
long hidden by the smoke of the fires that roasted men and 
women to-death, appeared to brighten once more. 
''""Queen Elizabeth was five and twenty years of age when 
she rode through the streets of London, from the Tower to 
Westminster Abbey, to be crowned. Her countenance was 
strongly marked, but, on the whole, commanding and digni- 
fied ; her hair was red, and her nose something too long 
and sharp for a woman's. She was not the beautiful 
creature her courtiers made out ; but she was well enough, 
and no doubt looked all the better for coming after the 
dark and gloomy Mary. She was well educated, but a 
roundabout writer, and rather a hard swearer and coarse 
talker. She was clever, but cunning and deceitful, and 
inherited much of her father's violent temper. I mention 
this now, because she has been so over-praised by one 
party, and so over-abused by another, that it is hardly 
possible to understand the greater part of her reign with- 
out first understanding what kind of woman she really 
was. 

She began her reign with the great advantage of having 
a very wise and careful minister, Sir William Cecil, 
whom she afterwards made Lord Burleigh. Altogether, 
the people had greater reason for rejoicing than they usually 
had when there were processions in the streets ; and they 
were happy with some reason. All kinds of shows and 
images were set up; Gog and Magog were hoisted to the 



288 A CHILD'S HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. 

top of Temple Bar; and (which was more to the purpose) 
the corporation dutifully presented the young queen with 
the sum of a thousand marks in gold, — so heavy a present, 
that she was obliged to take it -into her carriage with both 
hands. The coronation was a great success ; and on the 
next day one of the courtiers presented a petition to the 
new queen, praying, that, as it was the custom to release 
some prisoner on such occasions, she would have the good- 
ness to release the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
and John, and also the Apostle St. Paul, who had been for 
some time shut up in a strange language, so that the people 
could not get at them. 

To this the queen replied that it would be better first 
to inquire of themselves whether they desired to be released 
or not; and, as a means of finding out, a great public 
discussion — a sort of religious tournament — was appoint- 
ed to take place between certain champions of the two 
religions, in Westminster Abbey. You may suppose that 
it was soon made pretty clear to common sense, that for 
people to benefit by what they repeat or read, it is rather 
necessary they should understand something about it. Ac- 
cordingly, a church service in plain English was settled, 
and other laws and regulations were made, completely es- 
tablishing the great work of the Reformation. The Ro- 
mish bishops and champions were not harshly dealt with, 
all things considered ; and the Queen's ministers were both 
prudent and merciful. 

The one great trouble of this reign, and the unfortu- 
nate cause of the greater part of such turmoil and blood- 
shed as occurred in it, was Mary Stuart, Queen op 
Scots. We will try to understand, in as few words as 
possible, who Mary was, what she was, and how she came 
to be a thorn in the royal pillow of Elizabeth. 

She was the daughter of the Queen Regent of Scot- 
land, Mary of Guise. She had been married, when a 
mere child, to the dauphin, the son and heir of the king 
of France. The Pope, who pretended that no one could 
rightfully wear the crown of England without his gracious 
permission, was strongly opposed to Elizabeth, who had 
not asked for the said gracious permission. And as 
Mary, Queen of Scots would have inherited the English 
crown in right of her birth, supposing the English Par- 
liament not to have altered the succession, the Pope him- 



ELIZABETH. 289 

self, and most of the discontented who were followers of 
his, maintained that Mary was the rightful queen of Eng- 
land, and Elizabeth the wrongful queen. Mary being so 
closely connected with France, and France being jealous 
of England, there was far greater danger in this than 
there would have been if she had had no alliance with 
that great power. And when her young husband, on the 
death of his father, became Francis the Second, King 
of France, the matter grew very serious. For the young 
couple styled themselves King and Queen of England ; 
and the Pope was disposed to help them by doing all 
the mischief he could. ^-^ 

Now, the reformed religion, under the guidance of a 
stern and powerful preacher, named John Knox, and 
Other such men, had been making fierce progress in Scot- 
land. It was still a half-savage country, where there was 
a great deal of murdering and rioting continually going 
on ; and the reformers, instead of reforming those evils as 
they should* have done, went to work in the, ferocious old 
Scottish spirit, laying churches and chapels waste, pulling 
down pictures and altars, and knocking about the Gray 
Friars, and the Black Friars, and the White Friars, and 
the friars of all sorts of colors, in all directions. This ob- 
durate and harsh spirit of the Scottish reformers (the 
Scotch have always been rather a sullen and frowning 
people in religious matters) put up the blood of the Ro- 
mish French court, and caused France to send troops over 
to Scotland, with the hope of setting the friars of all sorts 
of colors on their legs again ; of conquering that country 
first, and England afterwards, and so crushing th'e Refor- 
mation all to pieces.^ The Scottish reformers, who had 
formed a great league which they called The Congrega- 
tion of the Lord, secretly represented to Elizabeth, that, 
if the reformed religion got the worst of it with them, it 
would be likely to get the worst of it in England too; 
and thus Elizabeth, the ugh she had a high notion of the 
rights of kings and queens to do any thing they liked, 
sent an army to Scotland to support the reformers, who 
Were in arms against their sovereign. All these proceed- 
ings led to a treaty of peace at Edinburgh, under which 
the French consented to depart from the kingdom. By 
a separate treaty, Mary and her young husband engaged 

25 



290 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

to renounce their assumed title of King and Queen of Eng 
land. But this treaty they never fulfilled. 

It happened soon after matters had got to this state 
that the young French king died, leaving Mary a younj 
widow. She was then invited by her Scottish subjects t< 
return home and reign over them; and, as she was no 
now happy where she was, she, after a little time, complied 

Elizabeth had been queen three years when Mary, Queer 
of Scots, embarked at Calais for her own rough quarrelling 
country. As she came out of the harbor, a vessel wa 
lost before her eyes ; and she said, " good God ! wha 
an omen this is for such a voyage!" She was very fonc 
of France, and sat on the deck, looking back at it and weep 
ing, until it was quite dark. When she went to bed, sh< 
directed to be called at daybreak, if the French coast wer( 
still visible, that she might behold it for the last time 
As it proved to be a clear morning, this was done ; anc 
she again wept for the country she was leaving, and saic 
many times, "Farewell, France! Farewell, France! ] 
shall never see thee again!" All this was long remem- 
bered afterwards, as sorrowful and interesting in a fail 
young princess of nineteen. Indeed, I am afraid it grad- 
ually came, together with her other distresses, to surround 
her with greater sympathy than she deserved. 

When she came to Scotland, and took up her abode j 
at the palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh, she found her- 
self among uncouth strangers, and wild, uncomfortable 
customs, very different from her experiences in the court 
of France. The very people who were disposed to love hei 
made her head ache, when she was tired out by her voyage 3 
with a serenade of discordant music, — a fearful concert of 
bagpipes, I suppose, - — and brought her and her train home 
to her palace on miserable little Scotch horses that ap- 
peared to be half starved. Among the people who were 
not disposed to love her, she found the powerful leaders 
of the Reformed Church, who were bitter upon her amuse- 
ments, however innocent, and denounced music and dan- 
cing as works of the Devil. John Knox himself often lec- 
tured her, violently and angrily, and did much to make 
her life unhappy. All these reasons confirmed her old 
attachment to the Romish religion, and caused her, there 
is no doubt, most imprudently and dangerously, both for 
herself and for England too, to give a solemn pledge to 



ELIZABETH. 291 

the beads of the Romish Church, that, if she ever suc- 
ceeded to the English crown, she would set up that re- 
ligion again. In reading her unhappy history, you must 
always remember this; and also that during her whole 
life she was constantly put forward against the queen, 
in some form or other, by the Romish party. 

That Elizabeth, on the other hand, was not inclined 
to like her, is pretty certain. Elizabeth was very vain 
and jealous, and had an extraordinary dislike to people 
being married. She treated Lady Catherine Grey, sister 
of the beheaded Lady Jane, with such shameful severity, 
■for no other reason than her being secretly married, that 
she died, and her husband was ruined; so, when a second 
marriage for Mary began to be talked about, probably 
Elizabeth disliked her more. Not that Elizabeth wanted 
suitors of her own ; for they started up from Spain, Austria, 
Sweden, and England. Her English lover at this time, 
and one whom she much favored too, was Lord Robert 
Dudley, Earl of Leicester, — himself secretly married to 
Amy Robs art, the daughter of an English gentleman, 
whom he was strongly suspected of causing to be mur- 
dered, down at his country seat, Cumnor Hall in Berkshire, 
that he might- be free to marry the queen. Upon this 
story, the great writer, Sir Walter Scott, has founded 
one of his best romances. But if Elizabeth knew how to 
lead her handsome favorite on, for her own vanity and 
pleasure, she knew how to stop him for her own pride ; 
and his love, and all the other proposals, came to noth- 
ing. The queen always declared in good set speeches, 
that she would never be married at all, but would live 
and die a maiden queen. It was a very pleasant and 
meritorious declaration, I suppose ; but it has been puffed 
and trumpeted so much, that I am rather tired of it myself. 

Divers princes proposed to marry Mary ; but the English 
court had reasons for being jealous of them all, and even 
proposed, as a matter of policy, that she should marry that 
very Earl of Leicester who had aspired to be the husband 
of Elizabeth. At last, Lord Darnley, son of the Earl 
of Lennox, and himself descended from the Royal Eamily 
of Scotland, went over with Elizabeth's consent to try his 
fortune at Holyrood. He was a tall simpleton, and could 
dance and play the guitar; but I know of nothing else he 
could do, unless it were to get very drunk, and eat glutton- 



292 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

ously, and make a contemptible spectacle of himself in; 
many mean and vain ways. However, he gained Mary's 
heart, not disdaining in the pursuit of his object to ally 
himself with one of her secretaries, David Rjzzio, who 
had great influence with her. He soon married the queen. 
This marriage does not say much for her ; but what followed 
will presently say less. 

Mary's brother, the Earl of Murray, and head of the 
Protestant party in Scotland, had opposed this marriage, 
partly on religious grounds, and partly, perhaps, from per-' 
sonal dislike of the very contemptible bridegroom. When 
.it had taken place, through Mary's gaining over to -it the! 
more powerful of the lords about her, she banished Murray 
for his pains ; and when he and some other nobles rose in 
arms to support the reformed religion, she herself, within a | 
mouth of her wedding-day, rode against them in armor! 
with loaded pistols in her saddle. Driven out of Scotland, 
they presented themselves before Elizabeth, who called: 
them traitors in public, and assisted them in private, ac- 
cording to her crafty nature. 

Mary had been married but .a little while, when she be- 
gan to hate her husband, who, in his turn, began to hate 
that David Rizzio, with whom he had leagued to gain her 
favor, -and whom he now believed to be her lover. He' 
hated Kizzio to that extent, that he made a compact, with \ 
Lord E-uthven and three other lords to get rid of him by 
murder. The wicked agreement they made in solemn se- 
crecy upon the 1st of March, 1566, and on the night of Sat- 
urday, the 9th, the conspirators were brought by Darnley up 
a private staircase, dark and steep, into a range of rooms j 
where they knew that Mary was sitting at supper with her 
sister, Lady Argyle, and this doomed man. When they went 
into the room, Darnley took the queen round the waist, and 
Lord Ruthven, who had risen from a bed of sickness to do 
this murder, came in, gaunt and ghastly, leaning on two men. 
Eizzio ran behind the queen for shelter and protection. " Let 
him come out of the room," said Ruthven. " He shall not 
leave the room," replied the queen: "I read his danger in 
your face, and it is my will that he remain here." They then 
set upon him, struggled with him, overturned the table, drag- 
ged him out, and killed him with fifty-six stabs. When the 
queen heard that he was dead, she said, " No more tears. 
I will think now of revenge ! " 



ELIZABETH. *93 

Within a day or two, she gained her husband over, and 
♦revailed on the tall idiot to abandon the conspirators, and 
ly with her to Dunbar. There he issued a proclamation, 
udaciously and falsely denying that he had any knowledge 
f the late bloody business ; and there they were joined by 
he Earl Both well and some other nobles. With their 
ielp, they raised eight thousand men, returned to Edinburgh, 
nd drove the assassins into England. Mary soon after- 
wards gave birth to a son, — still thinking of revenge. 

That she should have had a greater scorn for her husband 
iter his late cowardice and treachery than she had had be- 
ore was natural enough. There is little doubt that she 
iow began to love Bothwell instead, and to plan with him 
aeans of getting rid of Darnley. Bothwell had such power 
■ver her, that he induced her even to pardon the assassins 
>f Rizzio. The arrangements for the christening of the 
T oung prince were intrusted to him, and he was one of the 
■nost important people at the ceremony, where the child 
vas named James ; Elizabeth being his godmother, though 
lot present at the occasion. A week afterwards, Darnley, 
vho had left Mary and gone to his father's house at Glas- 
gow, being taken ill with the small-pox, she sent her own 
Physician to attend him. But there is reason to apprehend 
;hat this was merely a show and a pretence, and that she 
mew what was doing, when Bothwell within another month 
Droposed to one of the late conspirators against Rizzio, to 
murder Darnley, " for that it was the queen's mind that he 
should be taken away." It is certain that on that very day 
she wrote to her ambassador in France, complaining of him, 
and yet went immediately to Glasgow, feigning to be very 
anxious about him, and to love him very much. If she 
wanted to get him in her power, she succeeded to her heart's 
content ; for she induced him to go back with her to Edin- 
burgh, and to occupy, instead of the palace, a lone house 
outside the city called the Kirk of Field. Here he lived 
for about a week. One Sunday night, she remained with 
him until ten o'clock, and then left him to go to Holyrood 
to be present at an entertainment given in celebration of 
the marriage of one of her favorite servants. At two 
o'clock in the morning the city was shaken by a great ex- 
plosion, and the Kirk of Field was blown to atoms. 

Darnley's body was found next day lying under a tree at 
some distance. How it came there, undisfigured and un- 

25* 



294 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

scorched by gunpowder, and how this crime came to be e 
clumsily and strangely committed, it is impossible to dig 
cover. The deceitful character of Mary, and the deceitfu 
character of Elizabeth, have rendered almost every part o: 
their joint history uncertain and obscure. But I fear tha 
Mary was unquestionably a party to her husband's murder 
and that this was the revenge she had threatened. Tli 
Scotch people universally believed it. Voices cried out h| 
the streets of Edinburgh in the dead of the night, fo 
justice on the murderess. Placards were posted by un 
known hands in the public places, denouncing Bothwell a; 
the murderer, and the queen as his accomplice j and whei 
he afterwards married her (though himself already mar 
ried), previously making a show of taking her prisoner bj 
force, the indignation of the people knew no bounds. Th<' 
women particularly are described as having been quite fran- 
tic against the queen, and to have hooted and cried afte/ 
her in the streets with terrific Vehemence. 

Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This husband anc 
wife had lived together but a month, when they were sepa-, 
rated forever by the success of a band of Scotch nobles 
who associated against them for the protection of the 
young prince, whom Bothwell had vainly endeavored fa 
lay hold of, and whom he would certainly have murdered ; 
if the Earl of Mar, in whose hands the boy was, had not 
been firmly and honorably faithful to his trust. Before; 
this angry power, Bothwell fled abroad, where he died, a; 
prisoner and mad, nine miserable years afterwards. Mary, 
being found by the associated lords to deceive them at every 
turn, was sent a prisoner to Lochleven Castle; which, as it 
stood in the midst of a lake, could only be approached by 
boat. Here one Lord Lindsay, who was so much of a 
brute that the nobles would have done better if they had 
chosen a mere gentleman for their messenger, made hei 
sign her abdication, and appoint Murray regent of Scot- 
land. Here, too, Murray saw her in a sorrowing and 
humbled state. 

She had better have remained in the Castle of Lochleven, 
dull prison as it was, with the rippling of the lake against 
it, and the moving shadows of the water on the room-walls ; 
but she could not rest there, and more than once tried to 
escape. The first time she had nearly succeeded, dressed 
in the clothes of her own washerwoman j but, putting up her 



ELIZABETH. 295 

hand to prevent one of the boatmen from lifting her veil, 
the men suspected her, seeing how white it was, and rowed 
her back again. A short time afterwards, her fascinating 
manners enlisted in her cause a boy in the castle, called the 
little Douglas, who, while the family were at supper, stole 
the keys of the great gate, went softly out with the queen, 
locked the gate on the outside, and rowed her away across 
the lake, sinking the keys as they went along. On the op- 
posite shore she was met by another Douglas, and some few 
lords; and so accompanied, rode away on horseback to 
Hamilton, where they raised three thousand men. Here 
she issued a proclamation declaring that the abdication she 
had signed in her prison was illegal, and requiring the 
regent to yield to his lawful queen. Being a steady soldier, 
and in no way discomposed, although he was without an 
army, Murray pretended to treat with her, until he had col- 
lected a force about half equal to her own, and then he 
gave her battle. In one quarter of an hour he cut down all 
her hopes. She had another weary ride on horseback of 
sixty long Scotch miles, and took shelter at Dundrennan 
Abbey, whence she fled for safety to Elizabeth's do- 
minions. 

Mary, Queen of Scots, came to England to her own ruin, 
the trouble of the kingdom, and the misery and death of 
many, in 1568. How sne left it and the world, nineteen 
years afterwards, we have now to see. 



G 



Second Part 



When Mary, Queen of Scots, arrived in England, with- 
out money and even without any other clothes than those 
she wore, she wrote to Elizabeth, representing herself as an 
innocent and injured piece of royalty, and entreating her 
assistance to oblige her Scottish subjects to take her back 
again and obey her. But as her character was already 
known in England to be a very different one from what 
she made it out to be, she was told in answer that she 
must first clear herself. Made uneasy by this condition, 
Mary, rather than stay in England, would have gone to 
Spain, or to France, or would even have gone back to Scot- 
land. But, as her doing either would have been likely to 
trouble England afresh, it was decided that she should be 
detained here. She first came to Carlisle, and after that 



296 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF. ENGL AND. 

was moved about from castle to castle, as was considered 
necessary ; but England she never left again. 

After trying very hard to get rid of the necessity of 
clearing herself, Mary, advised by Lord Herries, her 
best friend in England, agreed to answer the charges 
against her, if the Scottish noblemen who made them would I 
attend to maintain them before such English noblemen as 
Elizabeth might appoint for that purpose. Accordingly, '. 
such an assembly, under the name of a conference, met, 
first at York, and afterwards at Hampton Court. In its 
presence Lord Lennox, Darnley's father, openly charged 
Mary with the murder of his son ; and whatever Mary's | 
friends may now say or write in her behalf, there is no 
doubt, that when her brother, Murray, produced against her 
a casket containing certain guilty letters and verses which j 
he stated to have passed between her and Bothwell, she | 
withdrew from the inquiry. Consequently, it is to be sup- ; 
posed that she was then considered guilty by those who ; 
had the best opportunities of judging of the truth, and that 
the feeling which afterwards arose in her behalf was a very 
generous but not a very reasonable one. 

However, the Duke of Norfolk, an honorable but | 
rather weak nobleman, partly because Mary was captivat- 
ing, partly because he was ambitious, partly because he was 
over-persuaded by artful plotters against Elizabeth, con- 
ceived a strong idea that he would like to marry the Queen 
of Scots, though he was a little frightened, too, by the 
letters in the casket. This idea being secretly encouraged 
by some of the noblemen of Elizabeth's court, and even by 
the favorite Earl of Leicester (because it was objected to by . 
other favorites who were his rivals), Mary expressed her ap- 
proval of it, and the King of France and the King of j 
Spain are supposed to have done the same. It was not so 
quietly planned, though, but that it came to Elizabeth's 
ears, who warned the duke " to be careful what sort of a 
pillow he was going to lay his head upon." He made a 
humble reply at the time, but turned sulky soon afterwards, 
and, being considered dangerous, was sent to the Tower. 

Thus from the moment of Mary's coming to England she 
began to be the centre of plots and miseries. 

A rise of the Catholics in the north was the next of these ; 
and it was only checked by many executions and much 
bloodshed. It was followed by a great conspiracy of the 



ELIZABETH. 297 

Pope and some of the Catholic sovereigns of Europe to 
depose Elizabeth, place Mary on the throne, and restore the 
unreformed religion. It is almost impossible to doubt that 
Mary knew and approved of this; and' the Pope himself 
was so hot in the matter, that he issued a bull, in which he 
openly called Elizabeth the "pretended Queen" of England, 
excommunicated her, and excommunicated all her subjects 
who should continue to obey her. A copy of this miserable 
paper got into London, and was found one morning publicly 
posted on the Bishop of London's gate. A great hue and 
cry being raised, another copy was found in the chamber of 
a student of Lincoln's Inn, who confessed, being put upon 
the rack, that he had received it from one John Felton, 
a rich gentleman who lived across the Thames, near South- 
wark. This John Felton, being put upon the rack too, 
confessed that he had posted the placard on the bishop's 
gate. For this offence he was, within four days, taken to 
St. Paul's* Churchyard, and there hanged and quartered. 
As to the Pope's bull, the people by the Reformation having 
thrown off the Pope, did not care much, you may suppose, 
for the Pope's throwing off them. It was a mere dirty 
piece of paper, and not half so powerful as a street-ballad. 

On the very day when Felton was brought to his trial, 
the poor Duke of Norfolk was released. It would have 
been well for him if he had kept away from the Tower ever- 
more, and from the snares that had taken him there. But 
even while he was in that dismal place he corresponded 
with Mary ; and, as soon as he was out of it, he began to 
plot again. Being discovered in correspondence with the 
Pope, with a view to a rising in England which should 
force Elizabeth to consent to his marriage with Mary, and 
to repeal the laws against the Catholics, he was re-commit- 
ted to the Tower, and brought to trial. He was found guilty 
by the unanimous verdict of the lords who tried him, and 
was sentenced to the block. 

It is very difficult to make out, at this distance of time, 
and between opposite accounts, whether Elizabeth really 
was a humane woman, or desired to appear so, or was fearful 
of shedding the blood of people of great name who were 
popular in the country. Twice she commanded and coun- 
termanded the execution of this duke ; and it did not take 
place until five months after his trial. The scaffold was 
erected on Tower Hill j and there he died like a brave man. 



298 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

He refused to have his eyes bandaged, saying that he was 
not at all afraid of death ; and he admitted the justice of his 
sentence, and was much regretted by the people. 

Although Mary had shrunk at the most important time 
from disproving her guilt, she was very careful never to do 
any thing that would admit it. All such proposals as were 
made to her by Elizabeth for her release required that ad- 
mission in some form or other, and therefore came to noth- 
ing. Moreover, both women being artful and treacherous, 
and neither ever trusting the other, it was not likely that 
they could ever make an agreement. So the Parliament, 
aggravated by what the Pope had done, made new and 
strong laws against the spreading of the Catholic religion 
in England, and declared it treason in any one to say that 
the queen and her successors were not the lawful sovereigns 
of England. It would have done more than this but for 
Elizabeth's moderation. 

Since the Reformation, there had come to be three great 
sects of religious people — or people who called themselves 
so — in England ; that is to say, those who belonged to the 
reformed church, those who belonged to the unreformed 
church, and those who were called the Puritans, because 
they said that they wanted to have every thing very pure 
and plain in all the Church service. These last were for 
the most part an uncomfortable people, who thought it 
highly meritorious to dress in hideous manner, talk through 
their noses, and oppose all harmless enjoyments. But they 
were powerful too, and very much in earnest ; and they were 
one and all the determined enemies of the Queen of Scots. 
The Protestant feeling in England was further strengthened 
by the tremendous cruelties to which Protestants were ex- 
posed in France and in the Netherlands. Scores of thou- 
sands of them were put to death in those countries with 
every cruelty that can be imagined; and at last, in the 
autumn of the year 1572, one of the greatest barbarities 
ever committed in the world took place at Paris. 

It is called in history, The Massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew, because it took place on St. Bartholomew's Eve. The 
day fell on Saturday, the 23d of August. On that day all 
the great leaders of the Protestants (who were there called 
Huguenots) were assembled together, for the purpose, as 
was represented to them, of doing honor to the marriage of 
their chief, the young King of Navarre, with the sister of 



ELIZABETH. 299 

Charles the Ninth, a miserable young king who then oc- 
cupied the French throne. This dull creature was made to 
believe by his mother, and other fierce Catholics about him, 
that the Huguenots meant to take his life ; and he was 
persuaded to give secret orders, that, on the tolling of a great 
bell, they should be fallen upon by an overpowering force of 
armed men, and slaughtered wherever they could be found. 
When the appointed hour was close at hand, the stupid 
wretch, trembling from head to foot, was taken into a bal- 
cony by his mother to see the atrocious work begun. The 
moment the bell tolled, the murderers broke forth. During 
all that night and the two next days, they broke into the 
houses, fired the houses, shot and stabbed the Protestants, 
men, women, and children, and flung their bodies into the 
streets. They were shot at in the streets as they passed 
along, and their blood ran down the gutters. Upwards of 
ten thousand Protestants were killed in Paris alone ; in all 
France, four or five times that number. To return thanks 
to Heaven for these diabolical murders, the Pope and his 
train actually went in public procession at Rome ; and, as 
if this were not shame enough for them, they had a medal 
struck to commemorate the event. But, however comfort- 
able the wholesale murders were to these high authorities, 
they had not that soothing effect upon the doll-king. I am 
happy to state that he never knew a moment's peace after- 
wards ; that he was continually crying out that he saw the 
Huguenots covered with blood and wounds falling dead 
before him ; and that he died within a year, shrieking and 
yelling and raving to that degree, that, if all the Popes who 
had ever lived had been rolled into one, they would not have 
afforded his guilty majesty the slightest consolation. 

When the terrible news of the massacre arrived in Eng- 
land, it made a powerful impression indeed upon the people. 
If they began to run a little wild against the Catholics at 
about this time, this fearful reason for it, coming so soon 
after the days of bloody Queen Mary, must be remembered 
in their excuse. The court was not quite so honest as the 
people ; but perhaps it sometimes is not. It received the 
French ambassador, with all the lords and ladies dressed in 
deep mourning, and keeping a profound silence. Neverthe- 
less, a proposal of marriage which he had made to Eliza- 
beth only two days before the eve of St. Bartholomew, 
on behalf of the Duke of Alencon, the French king's 



300 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

brother, a boy of seventeen, still went on; while, on the i 
other hand, in her usual crafty way, the queen secretly sup- 
plied the Huguenots with money and weapons. 

I must say, that for a queen who made all those fine 
speeches, of which I have confessed myself to be rather 
tired, about living and dying a maiden queen, Elizabeth 
was " going " to be married pretty often. Besides always 
having some English favorite or other whom she by turns 
encouraged, and swore at, and knocked about, — for the j 
maiden queen was very free with her fists, — she held this ! 
French duke, off and on, through several years. When he ; 
at last came over to England, the marriage articles were I 
actually drawn up, and it was settled that the wedding 
should take place in six weeks. The queen was then so I 
bent upon it, that she prosecuted a poor Puritan named i 
Stubbs, and a poor bookseller named Page, for writing j 
and publishing a pamphlet against it. Their right hands : 
were chopped off for this crime; and poor Stubbs, more I 
loyal than I should have been myself under the circum- 
stances, immediately pulled off his hat with his left hand, j 
and cried, " God save the Queen ! " Stubbs was cruelly 
treated; for the marriage never took place after all, though 
the queen pledged herself to the duke with a ring from her ! 
own finger. He went away, no better than he came, when i 
the courtship had lasted some ten years altogether ; and he | 
died a couple of years afterwards, mourned by Elizabeth, ' 
who appears to have been really fond of him. It is not | 
much to her credit ; for he was a bad enough member of a i 

bad family- 

To return to the Catholics. There arose two orders of , 
priests who were very busy in England, and who were 
much dreaded. These were the Jesuits (who were every- 
where in all sorts of disguises) and the Seminary I 
Priests, The people had a great horror of the first, 
because they were known to have taught that murder was 
lawful if it were done with an object of which they ap- j 
proved ; and they had a great horror of the second, because 
they came to teach the old religion, and to be the successors 
of " Queen Mary's priests," as those yet lingering in Eng- 
land were called, when they should die out. The severest 
laws were made against them, and were most unmercifully 
executed. Those who sheltered them in their houses often 
suffered heavily for what was an act of humanity ; and the 



ELIZABETH. 301 

rack, that cruel torture which tore men's limbs asunder, 
was constantly kept going. What these unhappy men 
confessed, or what was ever confessed by any one under 
that agony, must always be received with great doubt, as 
it is certain that people have frequently owned to the most 
absurd and impossible crimes to escape such dreadful suf- 
fering. But I cannot doubt it to have been proved by 
papers, that there were many plots, both among the Jesuits, 
and with France, and with Scotland, and with Spain, for 
the destruction of Queen Elizabeth, for the placing of Mary 
on the throne, and for the revival of the old religion. 

If the English people were too ready to believe in plots, 
there were, as I have said, good reasons for it. When the 
massacre of St. Bartholomew was yet fresh in their recol- 
lection, a great Protestant Dutch hero, the Prince of 
Orange, was shot by an assassin, who confessed that he 
had been kept and trained for the purpose in a college of 
Jesuits.'- The Dutch, in this surprise and distress, offered 
to make Elizabeth their sovereign ; but she declined the 
honor, and sent them a small army instead, under the 
command of the Earl of Leicester, who, although a capital 
court favorite, was not much of a general. He did so little 
in Holland, that his campaign there would probably have 
been forgotten, but for its occasioning the death of one of 
the best writers, the best knights, and the best gentlemen, 
of that or any age. This was Sir Philip Sidney, who 
was wounded by a musket-ball in the thigh as he mounted 
a fresh horse, after having had his own killed under him. 
He had to ride back wounded, a long distance, and was very 
faint with fatigue and loss of blood, when some water, for 
which he had eagerly asked, was handed to him. But he 
was so good and gentle even then, that seeing a poor badly- 
. wounded common soldier lying on the ground, looking at 
the water with longing eyes, he said, "Thy necessity 
is greater than mine," and gave it up to him. This 
touching action of a noble heart is perhaps as well known 
as any incident in history, — is as famous, far and wide, as 
the blood-stained Tower of London, with its axe and block 
and murders out of number. So delightful is an act of true 
humanity, and so glad are mankind to remember it ! - 

At home, intelligence of plots began to thicken every 
day. I suppose the people never did live under such con- 
tinual terrors as those by which they were possessed now, 



302 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of Catholic risings and burnings and poisonings, and I 
don't know what. Still, we must always remember that 
they lived near and close to awful realities of that kind, 
and that with their experience it was not difficult to believe 
in any enormity. The government had the same fear, and 
did not take the best means of discovering the truth ; for 
besides torturing the suspected, it employed paid spies, who 
will always lie for their own profit. It even made some of 
the conspiracies it brought to light, by sending false letters 
to disaffected people, inviting them to join in pretended 
plots, which they too readily did. 

But one great real plot was at length discovered ; and it 
ended the career of Mary, Queen of Scots. A seminary 
priest named Ballard, and a Spanish soldier named Sav- 
age, set on and encouraged by certain French priests, im- 
parted a design to one Antony Babington — a gentleman 
of fortune in Derbyshire, who had been for some time a 
secret agent of Mary's — for murdering the queen. Bab- 
ington then confided the scheme to some other Catholic 
gentlemen, who were his friends, and they joined in it 
heartily. They were vain, weak-headed young men, ridicu- 
lously confident, and preposterously proud of their plan ; 
for they got a gimcrack painting made, of the six choice 
spirits who were to murder Elizabeth, with Babington in an 
attitude for the centre figure. Two of their number, how- 
ever, one of whom was a priest, kept Elizabeth's wisest 
minister, Sir Francis Walsingham, acquainted with the 
whole project from the first. The conspirators were com- 
pletely deceived to the final point, when Babington gave 
Savage, because he was shabby, a ring from his finger, and 
some money from his purse, wherewith to buy himself new 
clothes in which to kill the queen. Walsingham, having 
then full evidence against the whole band, and two letters 
of Mary's besides, resolved to seize them. Suspecting some-- 
thing wrong, they stole out of the city, one by one, and hid* 
themselves in St. John's Wood, and other places, which 
really were hiding-places then ; but they were all taken, and 
all executed. When they were seized, a gentleman was 
sent from court to inform Mary of the fact, and of her being 
involved in the discovery. Her friends have complained 
that she was kept in very hard and severe custody. It 
does not appear very likely, for she was going out a-hunt- 
ing that very morning. 



ELIZABETH. 303 

Queen Elizabeth had been warned long ago, by one in 
France who had good information of what was secretly 
doing, that, in holding Mary alive, she held " the wolf who 
would devour her." The Bishop of London had, more 
lately, given the queen's favorite minister the advice in 
writing, " forthwith to cut off the Scottish queen's head." 
The question now was, what to do with her. The Earl 
of Leicester wrote a little note home from Holland, recom- 
mending that she should be quietly poisoned ; that noble 
favorite having accustomed his mind, it is possible, to reme- 
dies of that nature. His black advice, however, was dis- 
regarded ; and she was brought to trial at Fotheringay Castle 
in Northamptonshire, before a tribunal of forty, composed 
of both religions. There, and in the Star Chamber at 
Westminster, the trial lasted a fortnight. She defended 
herself with great ability, but could only deny the confessions 
that had been made by Babington and others ; could only 
call her own letters, produced against her by her own secre- 
taries, forgeries ; and, in short, could only deny every thing. 
She was found guilty, and declared to have incurred the 
penalty of death. The Parliament met, approved the sen- 
tence, and prayed the queen to have it executed. The 
queen replied that she requested them to consider whether 
no means could be found of saving Mary's life without en- 
dangering her own. The Parliament rejoined, No ; and the 
citizens illuminated their houses and lighted bonfires, in 
token of their joy that all these plots and troubles were to 
be ended by the death of the Queen of Scots. 

She, feeling sure that her time was now come, wrote a 
letter to the Queen of England, making three entreaties : 
first, that she might be buried in France ; secondly, that 
she might not be executed in secret, but before her servants 
and some others ; thirdly, that, after her death, her servants 
should not be molested, but should be suffered to go home 
with the legacies she left them. It was an affecting letter ; 
and Elizabeth shed tears over it, but sent no answer. Then 
came a special ambassador from France, and another from 
Scotland, to intercede for Mary's life ; and then the nation 
began to clamor, more and more, for her death. 

What the real feelings or intentions of Elizabeth were, 
can never be known now ; but I strongly suspect her of only 
wishing one thing more than Mary's death, and that was to 
keep free of the blame of it. On the 1st of February, 1587, 



304 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Lord'Burleigh having drawn out the warrant for the exe- 
cution, the queen sent to the Secretary Davison to bring it 
to her that she might sign it ; which she did. Next day, 
when Davison told her it was sealed, she angrily asked him 
why such haste was necessary. Next day but one, she 
joked about it, and swore a little. Again, next day but one, 
she seemed to complain that it was not yet done ; but still 
she would not be plain with those about her. So, on the 
7th, the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury, with the Sheriff 
of Northamptonshire, came with the warrant to Fotheringay, 
to tell the Queen of Scots to prepare for death. 

When those messengers of ill omen were gone, Mary 
made a frugal supper, drank to her servants, read over her 
will, went to bed, slept for some hours, and then arose and 
passed the remainder of the night saying prayers. In the 
morning she dressed herself in her best clothes ; and at 
eight o'clock, when the sheriff came for her to her chapel, 
took leave of her servants who were there assembled pray- 
ing with her, and went down stairs, carrying a Bible in one 
hand and a crucifix in the other. Two of her women and 
four of her men were allowed to be present in the hall ; 
where a low scaffold, only two feet from the ground, was 
erected, and covered with black ; and where the executioner 
from the Tower, and his assistant, stood, dressed in black 
velvet. The hall was full of people. While the sentence 
was being read, she sat upon a stool ; and when it was fin- 
ished, she again denied her guilt, as she had done before. 
The Earl of Kent and the Dean of Peterborough, in their 
Protestant zeal, made some very unnecessary speeches to her; 
to which she replied that she died in the Catholic religion, 
and they need not trouble themselves about that matter. 
When her head and neck were uncovered by the execution- 
ers, she said that she had not been used to be undressed by 
such hands, or before so much company. Finally, one of 
her women fastened a cloth over her face ; and she laid her 
neck upon the block, and repeated more than once in Latin, 
"Into thy hands, O Lord! I commend my spirit." Some 
say her head was struck off in two blows, some say in three. 
However that be, when it was held up, streaming with 
blood, the real hair beneath the false hair she had long worn 
was seen to be as gray as that of a woman of seventy, 
though she was at that time only in her forty-sixth year. 
All her beauty was gone. 



ELIZABETH. 305 

But she was beautiful enough to her little dog, who cow- 
ered under her dress, frightened, when she went upon the 
scaffold, and who lay down beside her headless body when 
all her earthly sorrows were over. 

Thikd Part. 

On its being formally made known to Elizabeth that 
the sentence had been executed on the Queen of Scots, 
she showed the utmost grief and rage, drove her favor- 
ites from her with violent indignation, and sent Davison 
to the Tower ; from which place he was only released in 
the end by paying an immense fine, which completely 
ruined him. Elizabeth not only over-acted her part in 
making these pretences, but most basely reduced to poverty 
one of her faithful servants for no other fault than obey- 
ing her commands. 

James, King of Scotland, Mary's son, made a show like- 
wise of being very angry on the occasion : but he was a 
pensioner of England to the amount of five thousand 
pounds a year ; and he had known very little of his mother, 
and he possibly regarded her as the murderer of his father, 
and he soon took it quietly. 

Philip, King of Spain, however, threatened to do 
greater things than ever had been done yet, to set up 
the Catholic religion, and punish Protestant England. 
Elizabeth, hearing that he and the Prince of Parma 
were making great preparations for this purpose, in order 
to be beforehand with them sent out Admiral Drake 
(a famous navigator, who had sailed about the world, and 
had already brought great plunder from Spain) to the 
port of Cadiz, where he burnt a hundred vessels full of 
stores. This great loss obliged the Spaniards to put off 
the invasion for a year ; but it was none the less formida- 
ble for that, amounting to one hundred and thirty ships, 
nineteen thousand soldiers, eight thousand sailors, two 
thousand slaves, and between" two and three thousand 
great guns. England was not idle in making ready to 
resist this great force. All the men between sixteen 
years old and sixty were trained and drilled ; the national 
fleet of ships (in number only thirty-four at first) was 
enlarged by public contributions, and by private ships, 
fitted out by noblemen; the City of London, of its 
own accord, furnished double the number of ships and 

26* 



306 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

men that it was required to provide; and, if ever the 
national spirit was up in England, it was up all through 
the country to resist the Spaniards. Some of the 
queen's advisers were for seizing the principal English 
Catholics, and putting them to death ; but the queen — 
who, to her honor, used to say that she would never be- 
lieve any ill of her subjects which a parent would not 
believe of her own children — rejected the advice, and 
only confined a few of those who were the most suspected 
in the fens in Lincolnshire. The great body of Catholics 
deserved this confidence ; for they behaved most loyally, 
nobly, and bravely. 
^"""Sb, with all England firing up like one strong, angry 
man, and with both sides of the Thames fortified, and 
with the soldiers under arms, and with the sailors in 
their ships, the country waited for the coming of the 
proud Spanish fleet, which was called The Invincible 
Armada. The queen herself, riding in armor on a 
white horse, and the Earl of Essex and the Earl of Lei- 
cester holding her bridle-rein, made a brave speech to 
the troops at Tilbury Fort, opposite Gravesend, which was 
received with such enthusiasm as is seldom known. Then 
came the Spanish Armada into the English Channel, sail- 
ing along in the form of a half-moon, of such great size 
that it was seven miles broad. But the English were 
quickly upon it ; and woe then to all the Spanish ships 
that dropped a little out of the half moon, for the English 
took them instantly ! And it soon appeared that the great 
Armada was any thing but invincible ; for on a summer 
night, bold Drake sent eight blazing fire-ships right into 
the midst of it. In terrible consternation, the Spaniards 
tried to get out to sea, and so became dispersed ; the Eng- 
lish pursued them at a great advantage. A storm came on, 
and drove the Spaniards among rocks and shoals ; and the 
swift end of the invincible fleet was, that it lost thirty 
great ships and ten thousand men, and, defeated and dis- 
graced, sailed home again. Being afraid to go by the Eng- 
lish Channel, it sailed all round Scotland and Ireland; 
some of the ships getting cast away on the latter coast in 
bad weather, the Irish, who were a kind . of savages, plun- 
dered those vessels, and killed their crews. So ended this 
great attempt to invade and conquer England. And 1 
think it will be a long time before any other invincible 



ELIZABETH. 307 

fleet, coming to England with the same object, will fare 
much better than the Spanish Armada. 

Though the Spanish king had had this bitter taste of 
English bravery, he was so little the wiser for it; as still to 
entertain his old designs, and even to conceive the absurd 
idea of placing his daughter on the English throne. But 
the Earl of Essex, Sib Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas 
Howard, and some other distinguished leaders, put to sea 
from Plymouth, entered the port of Cadiz once more, ob- 
tained a complete victory over the shipping assembled 
there, and got possession of the town. In obedience to the 
queen's express instructions, they behaved with great 
humanity; and the principal loss of the Spaniards was a 
vast sum of money which they had to pay for ransom. 
This was one of many gallant achievements on the sea, 
effected in this reign. Sir Walter Raleigh himself, after 
marrying a maid of honor, and giving offence to the 
maiden queen thereby, had already sailed to South America 
in search of gold. 

The Earl of Leicester was now dead; and so was Sir 
Thomas Walsingham, whom Lord Burleigh was soon to 
follow. The principal favorite was the Earl of Essex, 
a spirited and handsome man, a favorite with the people 
too, as well as with the queen, and possessed of many ad- 
mirable qualities. It was much debated at court whether 
there should be peace with Spain, or no.; and he was very 
urgent for war. He also tried hard to have his own way in 
the appointment of a deputy to govern in Ireland. One 
day, while this question was in dispute, he hastily took 
offence, and turned his back upon the queen : as a gentle 
reminder of which impropriety, the queen gave him a tre- 
mendous box on the ear, and told him to go to the devil. 
He went home instead, and did not re-appear at court for 
half a year or so, when he and the queen were reconciled, 
though never (as some suppose) thoroughly. 

From this time the fate of the Earl of Essex and that 
of the queen seemed to be blended together. The Irish 
were still perpetually quarrelling and fighting among them- 
selves ; and he went ov§r to Ireland as lord-lieutenant, to 
the great joy of his enemies (Sir Walter Raleigh among 
the rest), who were glad to have so dangerous a rival far 
off. Not being by any means successful there, and know- 
ing that his enemies would take advantage of that circum- 



308 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

stance to injure him with the queen, he came home again, 
though against her orders. ■ The queen being taken by sur- 
prise when he appeared before her, gave him her hand to 
kiss, and he was overjoyed, though it was not a very lovely 
hand by this time ; but, in the course of the same day, she 
ordered him to confine himself to his room, and two or 
three days afterwards had him taken into custody. With 
the same sort of caprice, — and as capricious an old woman 
she now was as ever wore a crown, or a head either, — she 
sent him broth from her own table on his falling ill from 
anxiety, and cried about him. 

He was a man who could find comfort and occupation in 
his books, and he did so for a time ; not the least happy time, 
I daresay, of his life. But it happened, unfortunately for him, 
that he held a monopoly in sweet wines, which means that 
nobody could sell them without purchasing his permission. 
This right, which was only for a term, expiring, he applied 
to have it renewed. The queen refused, with the rather 
strong observation, — but she did make strong observations, 
— that an unruly beast must be stinted in his food. Upon 
this, the angry earl, who had been already deprived of 
many offices, thought himself in danger of complete ruin, 
and turned against the queen, whom he called a vain old 
woman, who had grown as crooked in her mind as she had 
in her figure. These uncomplimentary expressions the 
ladies of the court immediately snapped up, and carried to 
the queen, whom they did not put in a better temper, you 
may believe. The same court ladies, when they had beau- 
tiful dark hair of their own, used to wear false red hair, to 
be like the queen. So they were not very high-spirited 
ladies, however high in rank. 

The worst object of the Earl of Essex, and some friends 
of his who used to meet at Lord Southampton's house, 
was to obtain possession of the queen, and oblige her by 
force to dismiss her ministers, and change her favorites. On 
Saturday} the 7th of February, 1601, the council suspecting 
this, summoned the earl to come before them. He, pre- 
tending to be ill, declined. It was then settled among his 
friends, that as the next day would be Sunday, when 
many of the citizens usually assembled at the Cross by 
St. Paul's Cathedral, he should make one bold effort to in- 
duce them to rise, and follow him to the palace. 

So, on the Sunday morning, he and a small body of ad- 



ELIZABETH. 309 

herents started out of his house, — Essex House by the 
Strand, with steps to the river, — having first shut up in it, 
as prisoners, some members of the council who came to ex- 
amine him, and hurried into the city with the earl at 
their head, crying out, " For the queen ! for the queen ! 
A plot is laid for my life." No one heeded them, however ; 
and, when they came to St. PauPs, there were no citizens 
there. In the mean time the prisoners at Essex House had 
been released by one of the earl's own friends ; he had been 
promptly proclaimed a traitor in the city itself; and the 
streets were barricaded with carts, and guarded by soldiers. 
The earl got back to his house by water, with difficulty ; 
and, after an attempt to defend his house against the troops 
and cannon by which it was surrounded, gave himself up 
that night. He was brought to trial on the 19th, 
and found guilty ; on the 25th he was executed on 
Tower -.Hill, where he died, at thirty-four years old, both 
courageously and penitently. His step-father suffered with 
him. . His enemy, Sir Walter Ealeigh, stood near the scaf- 
fold all the time, but not so near as we shall see him stand, 
before we finish his history. 

In this case, as in the cases of the Duke of Norfolk and 
Mary, Queen of Scots, the queen had commanded, and 
countermanded, and again commanded, the execution. It 
is probable that the death of her young .and gallant favor- 
ite, in the prime of his good qualities, was never off her 
mind afterwards; but she held. out, the same vain, obstinate, 
and capricious woman, for another year. Then she danced 
before her court on a state occasion, and cut, I should think, 
a mighty ridiculous figure, doing so in an immense ruff, 
stomacher, and wig, at seventy years old. For another year 
still, she held out, but without any more dancing, and as a 
moody, sorrowful, broken creature. At last, on the 10th 
of March, 1603, having been ill of a very bad cold, and 
made worse by the death of the Countess of Nottingham, 
who was her intimate friend, she fell into a stupor, and was 
supposed to be dead. She recovered her consciousness, how- 
ever, and then nothing would induce her to go to bed ; for 
she said that she knew that if she did, she should never 
get up again. There she lay for ten days, on cushions on 
the floor, without any food, until the lord admiral got her 
into bed at last, partly by persuasions and partly by main 
force. When they asked her who should succeed her, she 



310 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

replied that her seat had been the seat of kings, and that 
she would have for her successor, " No rascal's son, but a 
king's." Upon this, the lords present stared at one 
another, and took the liberty of asking whom she meant ; 
to which she replied, "Whom should I mean, but our 
cousin of Scotland ? " This was on the 23d of March. They 
asked her once again that day, after she was speechless, 
whether she was still in the same mind? She struggled 
up in bed, and joined her hands over her head in the form 
of a crown, as the only reply she could make. At three 
o'clock next morning, she very quietly died, in the forty- 
fifth year of her reign. 

That reign had been a glorious one, and is made forever 
memorable by the distinguished men who flourished in it. 
Apart from the great voyagers, statesmen, and scholars, 
whom it produced, the names of Bacon, Spenser, and 
Shakspeare will always be remembered with pride and 
veneration by the civilized world, and will always impart 
(though with no great reason perhaps) some portion of 
their lustre to the name of Elizabeth herself. It was a 
great reign for discovery, for commerce, and for English en- 
terprise and spirit in general. It was a great reign for the 
Protestant religion, and for the reformation which made 
England free. The queen was very popular, and, in her 
progresses, or journeys about her dominions, was every- 
where received with the liveliest joy. I think the truth is, 
that she was not half so good as she had been made out, 
and not half so bad as she had been made out. She had 
her fine qualities ; but she was coarse, capricious, and treach- 
erous, and had all the faults of an excessively vain young 
woman long after she was an old one. On the whole, 
she had a great deal too much of her father in her to 
please me. 

Many improvements and luxuries were introduced, in the 
course of these five and forty years, in the general manner 
of living; but cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting 
were still the national amusements ; and a coach was so 
rarely seen, and was such an ugly and cumbersome affair 
when it was seen, that even the queen herself, on many 
high occasions, rode on horseback on a pillion behind the 
lord chancellor. 



JAMES THE FIRST. 311 



CHAPTER XXXIL 

ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE FIRST. 

"Our cousin of Scotland" was ugly, awkward, and 
shuffling, both in mind and person. His tongue was much 
too large for his mouth, his legs were much too weak for 
his body, and his dull goggle-eyes stared and rolled like an 
idiot's. He was cunning, covetous, wasteful, idle, drunken, 
greedy, dirty, cowardly, a great swearer, and the most con- 
ceited man on earth. His figure — what is commonly 
called rickety from his birth — presented a most ridiculous 
appearance, dressed in thick padded clothes, as a safeguard 
against being stabbed (of which he lived in continual fear), 
of a grass-green color from head to foot, with a hunting- 
horn dangling at his side instead of a sword, and his hat 
and feather sticking over one eye, or hanging on the back 
of his head, as he happened to toss it on. He used to loll 
on the necks of his favorite courtiers, and slobber their faces, 
and kiss and pinch their cheeks ; and the greatest favorite 
he ever had used to sign himself, in his letters to his royal 
master, His Majesty's "dog and slave," and used to address 
his majesty as "his Sowship." His majesty was the worst 
rider ever seen, and thought himself the best. He was one 
of the most impertinent talkers (in the broadest Scotch) 
ever heard, and boasted of being unanswerable in all manner 
of argument. He wrote some of the most wearisome trea- 
tises ever read, — among others, a book upon witchcraft, in 
which he was a devout believer, — and thought himself a 
prodigy of authorship. He thought and wrote and said, 
that a king had a right to make and unmake what laws he 
pleased, and ought to be accountable to nobody on earth. 
This is the plain true character of the personage whom the 
greatest men about the court praised and flattered to that 
degree that I doubt if there be any thing much more shame- 
ful in the annals of human nature. 



312 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

He came to the English throne with great ease. The 
miseries of a disputed succession had been felt so long and 
so dreadfully, that he was proclaimed within a few hours of 
Elizabeth's death, and was accepted by the nation, even 
without being asked to give any pledge that he would 
govern well, or that he would redress crying grievances. 
He took a month to come from Edinburgh to London ; and, 
by way of exercising his new power, hanged a pickpocket 
on the journey without any trial, and knighted everybody 
he could lay hold of. He made two hundred knights before 
he got to his palace in London, and seven hundred before 
he had been in it three months. He also shovelled sixty- 
two new peers into the House of Lords ; and there was a 
pretty large sprinkling of Scotchmen among them, you may 
believe. 

His Sowship's prime minister, Cecil (for I cannot do 
better than call his majesty what his favorite called him), 
was the enemy of Sir Walter Raleigh, and also of Sir 
Walter's political friend, Lord Cobham ; and his Sowship's 
first trouble was a plot originated by these two, and entered 
into by some others, with the old object of seizing the king, 
and keeping him in imprisonment until he should change 
his ministers. There were Catholic priests in the plot, 
and there were Puritan noblemen too ; for although the 
Catholics and Puritans were strongly opposed to each 
other, they united at this time against his Sowship, because 
they knew that he had a design against both, after pretend- 
ing to be friendly to each, — this design being to have only 
one high and convenient form of the Protestant religion, 
which everybody should be bound to belong to, whether 
they liked it or not. This plot was mixed up with another, 
which may or may not have had some reference to placing 
on the throne, at some time, the Lady Arabella Stuart, 
whose misfortune it was to be the daughter of the younger 
brother of his Sowship's father, but who was quite innocent 
of any part in the scheme. Sir Walter Raleigh was ac- 
cused on the confession of Lord Cobham, — a miserable 
creature, who said one thing at one time, and another 
thing at another time, and could be relied upon in nothing. 
The trial of Sir Walter Raleigh lasted from eight in the 
morning until nearly midnight. He defended himself with 
such eloquence, genius, and spirit against all accusations, 
and against the insults of Coke, the Attorney-General, — 



JAMES THE FIEST. 313 

who, according to the custom of the time, foully abused him, 
— that those who went there detesting the prisoner came 
away admiring him, and declaring that any thing so won- 
derful and so captivating was never heard. He was found 
guilty, nevertheless, and sentenced to death. Execution 
was deferred, and he was taken to the Tower. The two 
Catholic priests-, less fortunate, were executed with the 
usual atrocity; and Lord Cobham and two others were 
pardoned on the scaffold. His Sowship thought it wonder- 
fully knowing in him to surprise the people by pardoning 
these three at the very block : but blundering and bun- 
gling, as usual, he had very nearly overreached himself; 
for the messenger on horseback, who brought the pardon, 
came so late, that he was pushed to the outside of the 
crowd, and was obliged to shout and roar out what he came 
for. The miserable Cobham did not gain much by being 
spared that day. He lived, both as a prisoner and a beggar, 
utterly despised and miserably poor, for thirteen years, and 
then died in an old out-house belonging to one of his former 
servants. 

This plot got rid of, and Sir Walter Ealeigji safely shut 
up in the Tower, his Sowship held a great dispute with the 
Puritans on their presenting a petition to him, and had it 
all his own way, — not so very wonderful, as he would talk 
continually, and would not hear anybody else, — and filled 
the bishops with admiration. It was comfortably settled 
that there was to be only one form of religion, and that 
all men were to think exactly alike. But although this 
was arranged two centuries and half ago, and although 
the arrangement was supported by much fining and 
imprisonment, I do not find that it is quite successful 
even yet. 

> His Sowship, having that uncommonly high opinion of 
himself as a king, had a very low opinion of Parliament as 
a power that audaciously wanted to control him. When he 
called his first parliament after he had been king a year, 
ho accordingly thought that he would take pretty high 
ground with them, and told them that he commanded them 
ras an absolute king." The Parliament thought thos^ 
istrong words, and saw the necessity of upholding their 
authority. His Sowship had three children : Prince Henry, 
Prince Charles, and the Princess Elizabeth. It would have 

i)een well for one of these, and we shaH too soon see which, 



314 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

if he had learnt a little wisdom concerning parliaments 
from his father's obstinacy. ^_1_ 

Now, the people still laboring under their old dread of 
the Catholic religion, this Parliament revived and strength- 
ened the severe laws against it. And this so angered 
Robert Catesby, a restless Catholic gentleman of an old 
family, that he formed one of the most desperate and terri- 
ble designs ever conceived in the mind of man, — no less a 
scheme than the Gunpowder Plot. 

His object was, when the king, lords, and commons, 
should be assembled at the next opening of Parliament, to 
blow them up, one and all, with a great mine of gunpow-| 
der. The first person to whom he confided this horrible 
idea was Thomas Winter, a Worcestershire gentleman 
who had served in the army abroad, and had been secretly 
employed in Catholic projects. While Winter was yet un- 
decided, and when he had gone over to the Netherlands, to 
learn from the Spanish ambassador there whether there j 
was any hope of Catholics being relieved through the inter- 
cession of the King of Spain with his Sowship, he found 
at Ostend a ,tall, dark, daring man, whom he had known 
when they were both soldiers abroad, and whose name was 
Guido — or Guy — Fawkes. Resolved to join the plot, 
he proposed it to this man, knowing him to be the man for 
any desperate deed ; and they two came back to England 
together. Here they admitted two other conspirators, — ! 
Thomas Percy, related to the Earl of Northumberland ; 
and John Wright, his brother-in-law. All these met to- 
gether in a solitary house in the open fields which were 
then near Clement's Inn, now a closely blocked-up part of' 
London ; and when they had all taken the oath of secrecy, ! 
Catesby told the rest what his plan was. They then went, 
np stairs into a garret, and received the sacrament from 
Father Gerard, a Jesuit, who is said not to have known 
actually of the Gunpowder Plot, but who, I think, must 
have had his suspicions that there was something desperate 
afoot. 

Percy was a gentleman pensioner ; and as he had occa 
sional duties to perform about the court, then kept at White- 
hall, there would be nothing suspicious in his living a» 
Westminster. So, having looked well about him, and hav- 
ing found a house to let, the back of which joined th« 
Parliament House, he hired it of a person named Ferris 



JAMES THE FIRST. 315 

for the purpose of undermining the wall. Having got pos- 
session of this house, the conspirators hired another on the 
Lambeth side of the Thames, which they used as a store- 
house for wood, gunpowder, and other combustible matters. 
These were to be removed at night (and afterwards were 
removed), bit by bit, to the house at Westminster ; and that 
there might be some trusty person to keep watch over the 
Lambeth stores, they admitted another conspirator, by 
.name Kobert Kay, a very poor Catholic gentleman. 
! All these arrangements had been made some months; and 
it was a dark wintry December night, when the conspirators, 
,vho had been in the mean time dispersed to avoid observa- 
tion, met in the house at Westminster, and began to dig. 
They had laid in a good stock of eatables, to avoid going in 
md out, and they dug and dug with great ardor. But the 
vail being tremendously thick, and the work very severe* 
hey took into their plot Christopher Weight, a younger 
>rother of John Wright, that they might have a^new pair 
>f hands to help. And Christopher Wright fell to like a 
resh man ; and they dug and dug, by night and by day, and 
fawkes stood sentinel all the time. And if any man's 
ieart seemed to fail him at all, Fawkes said, " Gentlemen, 
ve have abundance of powder and shot here ; and there is 
10 fear of our being taken alive, even if discovered." The 
ame Fawkes, who, in the capacity of sentinel, was always 
>rowling about, soon picked up the intelligence that the 
:ing had prorogued the Parliament again, from the 7th 
»f February, the day. first fixed upon, until the 3d of 
)ctober. When the conspirators knew this, they agreed to 
eparate until after the Christmas holidays, and to take no 
lotice of each other in the mean while, and never to write 
etters to one another on any account. So the house at 
Westminster was shut up again ; and I suppose the neigh- 
bors thought that those strange-looking men who lived 
here so gloomily, and went out so seldom, were gone away 
»o have a merry Christmas somewhere. 

It was the beginning of February, 1605, when Catesby 
net his fellow-conspirators again at this Westminster house. 
ie had now admitted three more, — John Grant, a War- 
wickshire gentleman of a melancholy temper, who lived in 
- doleful house near Stratford-upon-Avon, with a frowning 
> r all all round it, and a deep mcfat; Robert Winter, 
ldest brother of Thomas; and Catesby's own servant, 



316 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Thomas Bates, who, Catesby thought, had had some sus- 
picion of what his master was about. These three had all 
suffered more or less for their religion in Elizabeth's time. 
And now they all began to dig again ; and they dug and 
dug, by night and by day. 

They found it dismal work alone there, underground, I 
with such a fearful secret on their minds, and so^ many 
murders before them. They were filled with wild fancies 
Sometimes they thought they heard a great bell tolling 
deep down in the earth under the Parliament House ; 
sometimes they thought they heard low voices muttering 
about the Gunpowder Plot; once, in the morning, the}, 
really did hear a great rumbling noise over their heads, as 
they dug and sweated in their mine. Every man stopped 
and looked aghast at his neighbor, wondering what hac 
happened, when that bold prowler, Fawkes, who had beei 
out to look, came in and told them that it was only a deale: 
in coals who had occupied a cellar under the Parliamen 
House, removing his stock in trade to some other place I 
Upon this the conspirators, who with all their digging ant 
digging had not yet dug through the tremendously thicl 
wall, changed their plan; hired that cellar, which wai 
directly under the House of Lords; put six and thirty 
barrels of gunpowder in it, and covered it over with fagot 
and coals. Then they all dispersed again till September 
when the following new conspirators were admitted : Si] j 
Edward Batnham of Gloucestershire, Sir Everaei 
Digby of Rutlandshire, Ambrose Rookwood of Suffolk 
Erancis Tresham of Northamptonshire. Most of tlies 
were rich, and were to assist the plot, some with monej 
and some with horses, on which the conspirators were t j 
ride through the country, and rouse the Catholics, after th. 
Parliament should be blown into air. 

Parliament being again prorogued from the 3d o 
October to the 5th of November, and the conspirators bein 
uneasy lest their design should have been found ou 
Thomas Winter said he would go up into the House o 
Lords on the day of the prorogation and see how mate 
looked. Nothing could be better. The unconscious con 
missioners were walking about and talking to one anothe 
just over the six and thirty barrels of gunpowder. B 
came back and told the rest so, and they went on with the - 
preparations. They hired a ship, and kept it ready m tfc 



JAMES THE FIRST. 317 

fhames, in which Fawkes was to sail for Flanders after 
bring with a slow-match the train that was to explode the 
>owder. A number of Catholic gentlemen not in the 
ecret were invited; on pretence of a hunting-party, to meet 
^ir Everard Digby at Dunchurch on the fatal day, that they 
night be ready to act together. And now all was ready. 

But now the great wickedness and danger, which had 
»een all along at the bottom of this wicked plot, began to 
how itself. As the 5th of November drew near, most of 
jhe conspirators, remembering that they had friends and 
ielations who would be in the House of Lords that day, 
)*lt some natural relenting, and a wish to warn them to 
iteep away. They were not much comforted by Catesby's 
declaring, that, in such a cause, he would blow up his own 
•on. Lord Mounteagle, Tresham's brother-in-law, was 
iertain to be in the house ; and when Tresham found that 
'e could not prevail upon the rest to devise any means of 
paring their friends, he wrote a mysterious letter to this 
prd, and left it at his lodging in the dusk, urging him to 
eep away from the opening of Parliament, "since God 
nd man had concurred to punish the wickedness of the 
imes." It contained the words, "That the Parliament 
hould receive a terrible blow, and yet should not see who 
urt them." And it added, " The danger is past, as soon as 
ou have burnt the letter." 

The ministers and courtiers made out that his Sowship, 
y a direct miracle from heaven, found out what this letter 
heant. The truth is, that they were not long (as few men 
! r ould be) in finding out for themselves ; and it was decided 
I let the conspirators alone, until the very day before the 
pening of Parliament. That the conspirators had their 
jars is certain ; for Tresham himself said before them all, 
iat they were every one dead men ; and, although even he 
id not take flight, there is reason to suppose that he had 
| r arned other persons besides Lord Mounteagle. However, 
hey were all firm ; and Fawkes, who was a man of iron, 
^ent down every day and night to keep watch in the cellar 
js usual. He was there about two in the afternoon of the 
th, when the lord chamberlain and Lord Mounteagle 
jbrew open the door and looked in. "Who are you, 
biend?" said they. "Why," said Fawkes, "I am Mr. 
'ercy's servant, and am looking after his store of fuel here." 
! Your master has laid in a pretty good store," they re- 

27* 



318 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

turned, and shut the door and went away. Fawkes, upon 
this, posted off to the other conspirators to tell them all 
was quiet, and went back and shut himself up in the dark 
black cellar again, where he heard the bell go twelve o'clock, 
and usher in the 5th of November. About two hours 
afterwards, he slowly opened the door, and came out to look 
about him, in his old prowling way. He was instantly 
seized and bound by a party of soldiers under Sir Thomas 
Knevett. He had a watch upon him, some touchwood, 
some tinder, some slow-matches; and there was a dark 
lantern with a candle in it, lighted, behind the door. He 
had his boots and spurs on, — to ride to the ship, I suppose \\ 
and it was well for the soldiers that they took him so 
suddenly. If they had left him but a moment's time to 
light a match, he certainly would have tossed it in among 
the powder, and blown up himself and them. 

They took him to the king's bed-chamber first of all: 
and there the king, causing him to be held very tight, and! 
keeping a good way off, asked him how he could have the 
heart to intend to destroy so many innocent people. 
"Because," said Guy Fawkes, "desperate diseases need 
desperate remedies." To a little Scotch favorite, with a 
face like a terrier, who asked him, with no particular wis- 
dom, why he had collected so much gunpowder, he replied.; 
because he had meant to blow Scotchmen back to Scotland,! 
and it would take a deal of powder to do that. Next daj' 
he was carried to the Tower, but would make no confession 
Even after being horribly tortured, he confessed nothing 
that the government did not already know ; though he must 
have been in a fearful state, as his signature, still preserved 
in contrast with his natural handwriting before he was put 
upon the dreadful rack, most frightfully shows. Bates, t, 
very different man, soon said the Jesuits had had to do witl 
the plot, and probably, under the torture, would as readily 
have said any thing. Tresham, taken and put in the Towe: 
too, made confessions and unmade them, and died of ai 
illness that was heavy upon him. Kookwood, who hac 
stationed relays of his own horses all the way to Dunchurch 
did not mount to escape until the middle of the day, whei 
the news of the plot was all over London. On?he road, h< 
came up with the two Wrights, Catesby, and Percy ; an< 
they all galloped together into Northamptonshire ; thenc 
to Dunchurch, where they found the proposed party assem 



JAMES THE FIRST. 319 

bled. Finding, however, that there had been a plot, and 
that it had been discovered, the party disappeared in the 
course of the night, and left them alone with Sir Everard 
Digby. Away they all rode again, through Warwickshire 
and Worcestershire, to a house called Holbeach, on the 
borders of Staffordshire. They tried to raise the Catholics 
on their way, but were indignantly driven off by them. All 
this time they were hotly pursued by the Sheriff of Worces- 
ter, and a fast increasing concourse of riders. At last, re- 
solving to defend themselves at Holbeach, they shut them- 
selves up in the house, and put some wet powder before the 
fire to dry. But it blew up, and Catesby was singed and 
blackened, and almost killed, and some of the others were 
sadly hurt. Still, knowing that they must die, they resolved 
to die there, and, with only their swords in their hands, ap- 
peared at the windows to be shot at by the sheriff and his 
assistants. Catesby said to Thomas Winter, after Thomas 
had beenJiit in the right arm, which dropped powerless by 
his side, " Stand by me, Tom, and we will die together ! " 
which they did, being shot through the body by two 
bullets from one gun. John Wright and Christopher 
Wright and Percy were also shot. Rookwood and Digby 
were taken ; the former with a broken arm and a wound in 
his body too. 

It was the 15th of January, before the trial of Guy 
Fawkes, and such of the other conspirators as were left 
alive, came on. They were all found guilty, all hanged, 
drawn, and quartered, — some in St. Paul's Churchyard, on 
the top of Ludgate Hill; some before the Parliament 
House. A Jesuit priest, named Henry Garnet, to whom 
the dreadful design was said to have been communicated, 
was taken and tried ; and two of his servants, as well as a 
poor priest who was taken with him, were tortured without 
mercy. He himself was not tortured, but was surrounded 
in the Tower by tamperers and traitors, and so was made 
unfairly to convict himself out of his own mouth. He said, 
upon his trial, that he had done all he could to prevent the 
deed, and that he could not make public what had been 
told him in confession, — though I am afraid he knew of 
the plot in other ways. He was found guilty and executed, 
after a manful defence, and the Catholic Church made a 
saint of him. Some rich and powerful persons, who had had 
nothing to do with the project, were fined and imprisoned 



320 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

for it by the Star Chamber ; the Catholics in general, who 
had recoiled with horror from the idea of the infernal con- 
trivance, were unjustly put under more severe laws than 
before ; and this was the end of the Gunpowder Plot. 

Second Part. 

His Sowship would pretty willingly, I think, have blown 
the House of Commons into the air himself; for his dread 
and jealousy of it knew no bounds all through his reign. 
When he was hard pressed for money, he was obliged to 
order it to meet, as he could get no money without it ; and 
when it asked him first to abolish, some of the monopolies 
in necessaries of life, which were a great grievance to the 
people, and to redress other public wrongs, he flew into a 
rage and got rid of it again. At one time he wanted it to 
consent to the union of England with Scotland, and 
quarrelled about that. At another time it wanted him to 
put down a most infamous Church abuse, called the High 
Commission Court; and he quarrelled with it about that. 
At another time it entreated him not to be quite so fond of 
his archbishops and bishops, who made speeches in his praise 
too awful to be related, but to have some little consideration 
for the poor Puritan clergy, who were persecuted for preach- 
ing in their own way, and not according to the archbishops 
and bishops ; and they quarrelled about that. In short, what 
with hating the House of Commons, and pretending not to 
hate it ; and what with now sending some of its members 
who opposed him to Newgate or to the Tower, and now 
telling the rest that they must not presume to make 
speeches about the public affairs which could not possibly 
concern them; and what with cajoling and bullying, and 
frightening and being frightened, — the House of Commons 
was the plague of his Sowship' s existence. It was pretty 
firm, however, in maintaining its rights, and insisting that 
the Parliament should make the laws, and not the king by 
his own single proclamation (which he tried hard to do) ; 
and his Sowship was so often distressed for money, in con- 
sequence, that he sold every sort of title and public office as 
if they were merchandise, and even invented a new dignity 
called a baronetcy, which anybody could buy for a thousand 
pounds. These disputes with his parliaments, and his hunt- 
ing, and his drinking, and his lying in bed, — for he 



JAMES THE FIRST. 32i 

was a great sluggard, — occupied his Sowship pretty 
well. The rest of his time he chiefly passed in hugging 
and slobbering his favorites. The first of these was Sir 
Philip Herbert, who had no knowledge whatever, except 
of dogs and horses and hunting, but whom he soon made 
Earl of Montgomery. The next, and a much more 
famous one, was Robert Carr, or Ker (for it is not 
pertain which .was his right name), who came from the Bor- 
ler country, and whom he soon made Viscount Roches- 
ter, and afterwards Earl of Somerset. The way in 
.vhich his Sowship doted on this handsome young man is 
wen more odious to think of than the way in which the 
jreat men of England condescended to bow down before 
lim. The favorite's great friend was a certain Sir 
Thomas Overbury, who wrote his love-letters for him, and 
issisted him in the duties of his many high places, which 
lis own ignorance prevented him from discharging. But 
his same Sir Thomas having just manhood enough to 
lissuade the favorite from a wicked marriage with the 
>eautiful Countess of Essex, who was to get a divorce from 
ler husband for the purpose, the said countess, in her rage, 
jot Sir Thomas. put into the Tower, and there poisoned 
dm. Then the favorite and this bad woman were pub- 
icly married by the king's pet bishop, with as much-to-do 
nd rejoicing as if he had been the best man, and she the 
>est woman, upon the face of the earth. 

But after a longer sunshine than might have been ex- 
acted,— of seven y ears or so > tnat is to say, — another 
-andsome young man started up, and eclipsed the Earl of 
Iomekset. This was George Villiers, the youngest son 
f a Leicestershire gentleman : who came to court with all 
he Paris fashions on him, and could dance as well as 
lie best mountebank that ever was seen. He soon danced 
imself into the good graces of his Sowship, and danced 
ie other favorite out of favor. Then it was all at once 
iscovered that the Earl and Countess of Somerset had not 
eserved all those great promotions and mighty rejoicings ; 
rid they were separately tried for the murder of Sir 
nomas Overbury, and for other crimes. But the king 
'as so afraid of his late favorite's publicly telling some 
^graceful things he knew of him, — which he darkly 
ireatened to do, — that he was even examined with two 
ien standing, one on either side of him, each with a cloak 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



in his hand, ready to throw it over his head, and stop his 
mouth, if he should break out with what he had it in his 
power to tell. So a very lame affair was purposely made 
of the trial ; and his punishment was an allowance of four 
thousand pounds a year in retirement, while the countess 
was pardoned, and allowed to pass into retirement too. 
They hated one another by this time, and lived to revile 
and torment each other some years. 

While these events were in progress, and while his 
Sowship was making such an exhibition of himself, from 
day to day and from year to year, as is not often seen in 
any sty, three remarkable deaths took place in England. 
The first was that of the minister, Robert Cecil, Earl of 
Salisbury, who was past sixty, and had never been strong, j 
being deformed from his birth. He said at last that he had 
no wish to live ; and no minister need have had, with his 
experience of the meanness and wickedness of those dis- 
graceful times. The second was that of the Lady Arabella 
Stuart, who alarmed his Sowship mightily by privately 
marrying William Seymour, son of Lord Beauchamp, 
who was a descendant of King Henry the Seventh, and 
who, his sowship thought, might consequently increase and 
strengthen any claim she might one day set up to the 
throne. She was separated from her husband (who was put 
in the Tower) and thrust into a boat to be confined 
at Durham. She escaped in a man's dress to get away in 
a French ship from Gravesend to France, but unhappily 
missed her husband, who had escaped too, and was sooe 
taken. She went raving mad in the miserable Tower, and 
died there after four years. The last, and the inosi 
important, of these three deaths, was that of Prince Henry 
the heir to the throne, in the nineteenth year of his age 
He was a promising young prince, and greatly liked, — i 
quite well-conducted youth, of whom two very good things 
are known : first, that his father was jealous of him 
secondly, that he was the friend of Sir Walter Raleigb 
languishing through all those years in the Tower, and oftei 
said that no man but his father would keep such a bird ii 
such a cage. On the occasion of the preparations for th< 
marriage of his sister, the Princess Elizabeth, with a foreigi 
prince (and an unhappy marriage it turned out), he cain 
from Richmond, where he had been very ill, to greet hi 
new brother-in-law, at the palace at Whitehall. There hi 



JAMES THE FIRST. 323 

played a great game at tennis, in his shirt, though it was 
very cold weather, and was seized with an alarming illness, 
and died within a fortnight of a putrid fever. For this 
young prince Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, in his prison in the 
Tower, the beginning of a History of the World : a wonder- 
ful instance how little his Sowship could do to confine a 
great man's mind, however long he might imprison his 
body. 

And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had many 
faults, but who never showed so many merits as in trouble 
and adversity, may bring me at once to the end of his sad 
story. After an imprisonment in the Tower of twelve long 
years, he proposed to resume those old sea-voyages of his, 
and to go to South America in search of gold. His 
Sowship, divided between his wish to be on good terms with 
the Spaniards, through whose territory Sir Walter must 
pass (he had long had an idea of marrying Prince Henry 
to a Spanish princess), and his avaricious eagerness tQ get 
hold of the gold, did not know what to do. But in the end 
he set Sir Walter free, taking securities for his return ; and 
Sir Walter fitted out an expedition at his own cost, and on 
the 28th of March, 1617, sailed away in command of one of 
its ships, which he ominously called the Destiny. The 
expedition failed : the common men, not finding the gold 
they had expected, mutinied ; a quarrel broke out between 
Sir Walter and the Spaniards, who hated him for old suc- 
cesses of his against them ; and he took and burnt a little 
town called Saint Thomas. For this he was denounced to 
his Sowship by the Spanish ambassador as a pirate ; and re- 
turning almost broken-hearted, with his hopes and fortunes 
shattered, his company of friends dispersed, and his brave 
son (who had been one of them) killed, he was taken, — 
through the treachery of Sir Lewis Stukely, his near 
relation, a scoundrel and a vice-admiral, — and was once 
again immured in his prison-home of so many years. 

His Sowship being mightily disappointed in not getting 
any gold, Sir Walter Raleigh was tried as unfairly, and with 
as many lies and evasions, as the judges and law-officers 
and every other authority in church and state habitually 
practised under such a king. After a great deal of prevari- 
cation on all parts but his own, it was declared that he must 
die under his former sentence, now fifteen years old. So, on 
the 28th of October, 1618, he was shut up in the Gate 



324 A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 

House at Westminster to pass his last night on earth ; and 
there he took leave of his good and faithful lady, who was 
worthy to have lived in better days. At eight o'clock next 
morning, after a cheerful breakfast, and a pipe, and a cup 
of good wine, he was taken to Old Palace Yard, in West- 
minster, where the scaffold was set up, and where so many 
people of high degree were assembled to see him die, that 
it was a matter of some difficulty to get him through the 
crowd. He behaved most nobly : but, if any thing lay heavy 
on his mind, it was that Earl of Essex, whose head he had 
seen roll off; and he solemnly said that he had had no hand 
in bringing him to the block, and that he had shed tears 
for him when he died. As the morning was very cold, the 
sheriff said, would he come down to a fire for a little space, 
and warm himself? But Sir Walter thanked him, and said, 
No : he would rather it were done at once ; for he was ill of 
fever and ague, and in another quarter of an hour his shak- 
ing fit would come upon him if he were still alive, and his 
enemies might then suppose that he trembled for fear. 
With that he kneeled, and made a very beautiful and Chris- 
tian prayer. Before he laid his head upon the block he felt 
the edge of the axe, and said, with a smile upon his face, 
that it was a sharp medicine, but would cure the worst dis- 
ease. When he was bent down, ready for death, he said to 
the executioner, finding that he hesitated, "What dost thou 
fear ? Strike, man ! " So the axe came down, and struck 
his head off, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. 

The new favorite got on fast. He was made a viscount, 
he was made Duke of Buckingham, he was made a marquis, 
he was made master of the horse, he was made lord high 
admiral; and the chief commander of the gallant Eng- 
lish forces that had dispersed the Spanish Armada was dis- 
placed to make room for him. He had the whole kingdom 
at his disposal ; and his mother sold all the profits and hon- 
ors of the state, as if she had kept a shop. He blazed all 
over with diamonds and other precious stones, from his 
hatband and his earrings to his shoes. Yet he was an ig- 
norant, presumptuous, swaggering compound of knave and 
fool, with nothing but his beauty and his dancing to recom- 
mend him. This is the gentleman who called himself his 
majesty's dog and slave, and called his majesty, Your Sow- 
ship. His Sowship called him Steenie; it is supposed 
because that was a nickname for Stephen, and because St. 



JAMES THE FIRST. 325 

Stephen was generally represented in pictures as a hand- 
some saint. 

His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits'-end by his 
trimming between the general dislike of the Catholic reli- 
gion at home, and his desire to wheedle and flatter it abroad, 
as his only means of getting a rich princess for his son's 
wife, a part of whose fortune he might cram into his greasy 
pockets. Prince Charles — or as his Sowship called him, 
Baby Charles — being now Prince of v W ales, the old 
project of a marriage with the Spanish king's daughter had 
been revived for him ; and as she could not marry a Protest- 
ant without leave from the Pope, his Sowship himself se- 
cretly and meanly wrote to his Infallibility, asking for it. 
The negotiation for this Spanish marriage takes up a larger 
space in great' books than you can imagine ; but the upshot 
of it all is, that, when it had been held oif by the Spanish 
court for a long time, Baby Charles and Steenie set off in 
disguise^ as Mr. Thomas Smith and Mr. John Smith, to see 
the Spanish princess ; that Baby Charles pretended to be 
desperately in love with her, and jumped off walls to look 
at her, and made a considerable fool of himself in a good 
many ways; that she was called Princess of "Wales, and 
that the whole Spanish court believed Baby Charles to be 
all but dying for her sake, as he expressly told them he was ; 
that Baby Charles and Steenie came back to England, and 
were received with as much rapture as if .they had been a 
blessing to it ; that Baby Charles had actually fallen in love 
with Henrietta Maria, the French king's sister, whom 
he had seen in Paris ; that he thought it a wonderfully fine 
and princely thing to have deceived the Spaniards all 
through ; and that he openly said, with a chuckle, as soon 
as he was safe and sound at home again, that the Spaniards 
were great fools to have believed him. 

Like most dishonest men, the prince and the favorite 
complained that the people whom they had deluded were 
dishonest. They made such misrepresentations of the 
treachery of the Spaniards, in this business of the Spanish 
match, that the English nation became eager for a war with 
them. Although the gravest Spaniards laughed at the idea 
of his Sowship in a warlike attitude, the Parliament grant- 
ed money for the beginning of hostilities, and the treaties 
with Spain were publicly declared to be at an end. The 
Spanish ambassador in London — probably with the- help 

28 



326 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of the fallen favorite, the Earl of Somerset — being nnable 
to obtain speech with his Sowship, slipped a paper into his 
hand, declaring that he was a prisoner in his own house, 
and was entirely governed by Buckingham and his creatures. 
The first effect of this letter was, that his Sowship bega^ to 
cry and whine, and took Baby Charles away from Steenie, 
and went down to Windsor, gabbling all sorts of nonsense. 
The end of it was that his Sowship hugged his dog and 
slave, and said he was quite satisfied. 

He had given the prince and the favorite almost unlimited 
power to settle any thing with the Pope as to the Spanish 
marriage; and he now, with a view to the French one, 
signed a treaty that ail Roman Catholics in England should 
exercise their religion freely, and should never be required 
to take any oath contrary thereto. In return for this, and 
for other concessions much less to be defended, Henrietta 
Maria was to become the prince's wife, and was to bring 
him a fortune of eight hundred thousand crowns. 

His Sowship's eyes were getting red with eagerly looking 
for the money, when the end of a gluttonous life came upon 
him ; and, after a fortnight's illness, on Sunday, the 27th of 
March, 1625, he died. He had reigned twenty-two years, 
and was fifty-nine years* old. I know of nothing more 
abominable in history than the adulation that was lavished 
on this king, and the vice and corruption that such a bare- 
faced habit of lying produced in his court. It is much to 
be doubted whether one man of honor, and not utterly self- 
disgraced, kept his place near James the First. Lord 
Bacon, that able and wise philosopher, as the first judge in 
the kingdom in this reign, became a public spectacle of dis- 
honesty and corruption; and in his base flattery of his 
Sowship, and in his crawling servility to his dog and slave, 
disgraced himself even more. But a creature like his Sow- 
ship set upon a throne is like a plague, and everybody 
receives infection from him. 



CHAELES THE FIRST. 327 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST. 

Baby Charles became King Charles the First in 
the twenty-fifth year of his age. Unlike his father, he was 
usually amiable in his private character, and grave and dig- 
nified in his bearing ; but, like his father, he had mon- 
strously exaggerated notions of the rights of a king, and 
was evasive, and not to be trusted. If his word could have 
been relied upon, his history might have had a different end. 

His first care was to send over that insolent upstart, 
Buckingham, to bring Henrietta Maria from Paris to be his 
queen ; upon which occasion, Buckingham, with his usual 
audacity, made love to the young Queen of Austria, and was 
very indignant indeed with Cardinal Richelieu, the 
French minister, for thwarting his intentions. The Eng- 
lish people were very well disposed to like their new queen, 
and to receive her with great favor when she came among 
them as a stranger. But she held the Protestant religion 
in great dislike, and brought over a crowd of unpleasant 
priests, who made her do some very ridiculous things, and 
forced themselves upon the public notice in many disagree- 
able ways. Hence the people soon came to dislike her, and 
she soon came to dislike them ; and she did so much all 
through this reign in setting the king, who was doatingly 
fond of her, against his subjects, that it would have been 
better for him if she had never been born. 

Now, you are to understand that King Charles the First, 
of his own determination to be a high and mighty king, 
not to be called to account by anybody, and urged on by his 
queen besides, deliberately set himself to put his- parliament 
down and to put himself up. You are also to understand, 
that, even in pursuit of this wrong idea (enough in itself 
to have ruined any king), he never took a straight course, 
but always a crooked one. 



328 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

He was bent upon war with Spain, though neither the 
House of Commons nor the people were quite <;lear as to 
the justice of that war, now that they began to think a little 
more about the story of the Spanish match. But the king 
rushed into it hotly, raised money by illegal means to meet 
its expenses, and encountered a miserable failure at Cadiz, 
in the very first year of his reign. An expedition to Cadiz 
had been made in the hope of plunder : but, as it was not 
successful, it was necessary to get a grant of money from 
the Parliament; and when they met in no very complying 
humor, t]je king told them, "to make haste to let him have 
it, or it would be the worse for themselves." Not put in a 
more complying humor by this, they impeached the king's 
favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, as the cause — which he 
undoubtedly was — of many great public grievances and 
wrongs. The king, to save him, dissolved the Parliament 
without getting the money he wanted ; and, when the lords 
implored him to consider and grant a little delay, he re- 
plied, "No, not one minute." He then began to raise 
money for himself by the following means among others. 

He levied certain duties, called tonnage and poundage, 
which had not been granted by the Parliament, and could 
lawfully be levied by no other power ; he called upon the 
seaport towns to furnish, and to pay all the cost for three 
months of a fleet of armed ships ; and he required the peo- 
ple to unite in lending him large sums of money, the re- 
payment of which was very doubtful. If the poor people 
refused, they were pressed as soldiers or sailors; if the 
gentry refused, they were sent to prison. Five gentlemen, 
named Sir Thomas Darnel, John Corbet, Walter 
Earl, John Heveningham, and Everard Hampden, 
for refusing, were taken up by a warrant of the king's 
privy council, and were sent to prison without any cause 
but the king's pleasure being stated for their imprisonment. 
Then the question came to be solemnly tried, whether this 
was not a violation of Magna Charta, and an encroachment 
by the king on the highest rights of the English people. His 
lawyers contended, No; because to encroach upon the rights 
of the English people would be to do wrong, and the king 
could do no wrong. The accommodating judges decided in 
favor of this wicked nonsense ; and here was a fatal division 
between the king and the people. 

For all this it became necessary to call another parlia- 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 329 

ment. The people, sensible of the dangers in which their 
liberties were, chose for it those who were best known for 
their determined opposition to the king ; but still the king, 
quite blinded by his determination to carry every thing be- 
fore him, addressed them, when they met, in a contempt- 
uous manner, and just told them in so many words that he 
had only called them together because he wanted money. 
The Parliament, strong enough and resolute enough to 
know that they would lower his tone, cared little for what 
lie said, and laid before him one of the great documents of 
history, which is called the Petition of Eight, requiring 
that the free men of England should no longer be called 
upon to lend the king money, and should no longer be 
pressed or imprisoned for refusing to do so ; further, that, 
the free men of England should no longer be seized by the 
king's special mandate or warrant, it being contrary to their 
rights and liberties, and the laws of their country. At first, 
the king -returned an answer to this petition, in which he 
tried to shirk it altogether; but the House of Commons 
then showing their determination to go on with the im- 
peachment of Buckingham, the king, in alarm, returned an 
, answer, giving his consent to all that was required of him. 
He not only afterwards departed from his word and honor on 
these points, over and over again, but, at this very time, he 
did the mean and dissembling act of publishing his first 
answer and not his second, merely that the people might 
suppose that the Parliament had not got the better of 
him. 

That pestilent Buckingham, to gratify his own wounded 
•vanity, had, by this time, involved the country in war with 
France, as well as with Spain. For such miserable causes 
and such miserable creatures are wars sometimes made. 
But he was destined to do little more mischief in this 
world. One morning, as he was going out of his house to 
his carriage, he turned to speak to a certain Col. Fryek, 
who was with him ; and he was violently stabbed with a 
knife, which the murderer left sticking in his heart. This 
happened in his hall. He had angry words up stairs, just 
before, with some French gentlemen, who were immediately 
suspected by his servants, and had a close escape from being 
set upon and killed. In the midst of the noise, the real 
murderer, who had gone to the kitchen and might easily 
have got away, drew his sword, and cried out, " I am the 

28* 



830 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

man ! " His name was John Felton, a Protestant, and 
a retired officer in the army. He said he had had no personal 
ill-will to the duke, but had killed him as a curse to the 
country. He had aimed his blow well ; for Buckingham had 
only had time to cry out, " Villain ! " and then he drew out 
the knife, fell against a table, and died. 

The council made a mighty business of examining John 
Eelton about this murder, though it was a plain case 
enough, one would think. He had come seventy miles to 
do it, he told them, and he did it for the reason he had de- 
clared : if they put him upon the rack, as that noble Mar- 
quis of Dorset, whom he saw before him, had the good- 
ness to threaten, he gave that marquis warning that he 
would accuse him as his accomplice. The king was un- 
pleasantly anxious to have him racked, nevertheless ; but 
as the judges now found out that torture was contrary to 
the law of England, — it is a pity they did not make the dis- 
covery a little sooner, — John Felton was simply executed for 
the murder he had done. A murder it undoubtedly was, 
and not in the least to be defended, though he had freed 
England from one of the most profligate, contemptible, and 
base court favorites to whom it has ever yielded. 

A very different man now arose. This was Sir Thomas 
Wentworth, a Yorkshire gentleman, who had sat in par- 
liament for a long time, and who had favored arbitrary and 
haughty principles, but who had gone over to the people's 
side on receiving offence from Buckingham. The king, 
much wanting such a man, — for besides being naturally 
favorable to the king's cause, he had great abilities, — made 
him first a baron, and then a viscount, and gave him high , 
employment, and won him most completely. 

A parliament, however, was still in existence, and was 
not to be won. On the 20th of January, 1629, Sir John 
Eliot, a great man who had been active in the Petition of 
Bight, brought forward other strong resolutions against the 
king's chief instruments, and called upon the speaker to 
put them to the vote. To this the speaker answered, " He 
was commanded otherwise by the king," and got up to 
leave the chair, which, according to the rules of the House 
of Commons, would have obliged it to adjourn without doing 
any thing more, when two members, named Mr. Hollis 
and Mr. Valentine, held him down. A scene of great 
confusion arose among the members; and while many 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 331 

swords were drawn and flashing about, the king, who was 
kept informed of all that was going on, told the captain of his 
guard to go down to the House, and force the doors. The reso- 
lutions were by that time, however, voted, and the House ad- 
journed. Sir John Eliot, and those two members who had held 
the speaker down, were quickly summoned before the council. 
As they claimed it to be their privilege not to answer out 
of parliament for any thing they had said in it, they were 
committed to the Tower. The king then went down and 
dissolved the Parliament, in a speech wherein he made men- 
tion of these gentlemen as " Vipers," which did not do him 
much good that ever I have heard of. 

As they refused to gain their liberty by saying they were 
sorry for what they had done, the king, always remarkably 
unforgiving, never overlooked their offence. When they 
demanded to be brought up before the court of king's bench, 
he even resorted to the meanness of having them moved 
aboui from prison to prison, so that the writs issued for 
that purpose should not legally find them. At last they 
came before the court, and were sentenced to heavy fines, 
and to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure. When 
Sir John Eliot's health had quite given away, and he so 
longed for change of air and scene as to petition for his 
release, the king sent back the answer (worthy of his Sow- 
ship himself) that the petition was not humble enough. 
When he sent another petition by his young son, in whioh 
he pathetically offered to go back to prison when his health 
was restored, if he might be released for its recovery, the 
king still disregarded it. When he died in the Tower, and 
his children petitioned to be allowed to take his body down 
to Cornwall, there to lay it among the ashes of his fore- 
fathers, the king returned for answer, " Let Sir John 
Eliot's body be buried in the church of that parish where 
he died." All this was like a very little king indeed, I 
think. 

And now for twelve long years, steadily pursuing his 
design of setting himself up and putting the people down, 
the king called no parliament, but ruled without one. If 
twelve thousand volumes were written in his praise (as a 
good many have been), it would still remain a fact, impossi- 
ble to be denied, that for twelve years King Charles the 
First reigned in England unlawfully and despotically, 
seized upon his subjects' goods and money at his pleasure, 



332 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. . 

and punished according to his unhridled will all who ven- 
tured to oppose him. It is a fashion with some people to 
think that this king's career was cut short j hut I must say 
myself that I think he ran a pretty long one. 

"William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the 
king's right-hand man in the religious part of the putting 
down of the people's liberties. Laud, who was a sincere 
man, of large learning but small sense, — for the two 
things sometimes go together in very different quantities, — 
though a Protestant, held opinions so near those of the 
Catholics that the Pope wanted to make a cardinal of him, 
if he would have accepted that favor. He looked upon 
vows, robes, lighted candles, images, &c, as amazingly im- 
portant in religious ceremonies; and he brought in an 
immensity of bowing and candle-snuffing. He also regarded 
archbishops and bishops as a sort of miraculous persons, 
and was 'inveterate in the last degree against any who 
thought otherwise. Accordingly, he offered up thanks to 
Heaven, and was in a state of much pious pleasure, when a 
Scotch clergyman named Leighton was pilloried, whipped, 
branded in the cheek, and had one of his ears cut off and 
one of his nostrils slit, for calling bishops trumpery and the 
inventions of men. He originated on a Sunday morning 
the prosecution of William Pryne, a barrister who was 
of similar opinions, and who was fined a thousand pounds, 
who was pilloried, who had his ears cut off on two occa- 
sions, — one ear at a time, — and who was imprisoned for 
life. He highly approved of the punishment of Dr. 
Bastwick, a physician, who was also fined a thousand 
pounds, and who afterwards had his ears cut off, and was 
imprisoned for life. These were gentle methods of per- 
suasion, some will tell you : I think they were rather cal- 
culated to be alarming to the people. 

In the money part of the putting down of the people's 
liberties, the king was equally gentle, as some will tell you ; 
as I think, equally alarming. He levied those duties of 
tonnage and poundage, and increased them as he thought 
fit. He granted monopolies to companies of merchants on 
their paying him for them, notwithstanding the great com- 
plaints that had, for years and years, been made on the 
subject of monopolies. He fined the people for disobeying 
proclamations issued by his Sowship in direct violation of 
law. He revived the detested forest-laws, and took private 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 333 

property to himself as his forest right. Above all, he 
determined to have what was called ship-money ; that is 
to say, money for the support of the fleet, not only from 
the seaports, hut from all the counties of England, — hav- 
ing found out, that, in some ancient time or other, all the 
counties paid it. The grievance of this ship-money being 
somewhat too strong, John Chambers, a citizen of Lon- 
don, refused to pay his part of it. For this the lord 
mayor ordered John Chambers to prison, and for that John 
Chambers brought a suit against the lord mayor. Lord 
Say also behaved like a real nobleman, and declared he 
would not pay. But the sturdiest and best opponent of 
the ship-money was John Hampden, a gentleman of 
Buckinghamshire, who had sat among the "vipers " in the 
House of Commons, when there was such a thing, and who 
had been the bosom friend of Sir John Eliot. This case 
was tried before the twelve judges in the Court of Exche- 
quer r and again the king's lawyers said it was impossible 
that ship-money could be wrong, because the king could 
do no wrong, however hard he tried, — and he really did try 
very hard during these twelve years. Seven of the judges 
said that was quite true, and Mr. Hampden was bound to 
pay ; five of the judges said that was quite false, and Mr. 
Hampden was not bound to pay. So the king triumphed 
(as he thought), by making Hampden the most popular 
man in England, where matters were getting to that height 
now that many honest Englishmen could not endure 
their country, and sailed away across the seas to found a 
colony in Massachusetts Bay in America. It is said that 
Hampden himself, and his relation, Oliver Cromwell, 
were going with a company of such voj^agers, and were 
actually on board ship, when they were stopped by a pro- 
clamation prohibiting sea-captains to carry out such pas- 
sengers without the royal license. But, oh ! it would have 
been well for the king if he had let them go ! 

This was the state of England. If Laud had been a 
madman just broke loose, he could not have done more 
mischief than he did in Scotland. In his endeavors (in 
which he was seconded by the king, then in person in that 
part of his dominions) to force his own ideas of bishops, 
and his own religious forms and ceremonies, upon the 
Scotch, he roused that nation to a perfect frenzy. They 
formed a solemn league, which they called The Covenant, 



334 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

for the preservation of their own religious forms : they rose 
in arms throughout the whole country ; they summoned all 
their men to prayers and sermons twice a day by beat of 
drum; they sang psalms, in which they compared their 
enemies to all the evil spirits that ever were heard of; and 
they solemnly vowed to smite them with the sword. At 
first the king tried force, then treaty, then a Scottish Par- 
liament which did not answer at all. Then he tried the 
Earl of Strafford, formerly Sir Thomas Wentworth; 
who, as Lord Went worth, had been governing Ireland. 
He, too, had carried it with a very high hand there, though 
to the benefit and prosperity of that country. 

Strafford and Laud were for conquering the Scottish peo- 
ple by force of arms. Other lords who were taken into 
council recommended that a parliament should at last be 
called ; to which the king unwillingly consented. So, on 
the 13th of April, 1640, that then strange sight, a parlia- 
ment, was seen at Westminster. It is called the Short 
Parliament ; for it lasted a very little while. While the 
members were all looking at one another, doubtful who 
would dare to speak, Mr. PYM^rose and set forth all that 
the king had done unlawfully during the past twelve years, 
and what was the position to which England was reduced. 
This great example set, other members took courage, and 
spoke the truth freely, though with great patience and modera- 
tion. The king, a little frightened, sent to say, that, if they 
would grant him a certain sum on certain terms, no more 
ship money should be raised. They debated the matter for 
two days ; and then, as they would not give him all he 
asked without promise or inquiry, he dissolved them. 

But they knew very well that he must have a parliament 
now; and he began to make that discovery too, though 
rather late in the day. Wherefore, on the 24th of Septem- 
ber, being then at York, with an army collected against the 
Scottish people, but his own men sullen and discontented 
like the rest of the nation, the king told the great council 
of the lords, whom he had called to meet him there, that 
he would summon another parliament to assemble on the 
3d of November. The soldiers of the Covenant had now 
forced their way into England, and had taken possession of 
the northern counties, where the coals are got. As it would 
never do to be without coals, and as the king's troops could 
make no head against the Covenanters, so full of gloomy 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 335 

zeal, a truce was made, and a treaty with Scotland was 
taken into consideration. Meanwhile the northern counties 
paid the Covenanters to leave the coals alone, and keep 
quiet. 

We have now disposed of the Short Parliament. We 
have next to see what memorable things were done by the 
long one. 

Second Part. 

The Long Parliament assembled on the 3d of November, 
1641. That day week the Earl of Strafford arrived from 
York, very sensible that the spirited and determined men 
who formed that parliament were no friends towards him, 
who had not only deserted the cause of the people, but who 
had on all occasions opposed himself to their liberties. The 
king told him, for his comfort, that the Parliament " should 
not hurt one hair of his head." But, on the very next day, 
Mr. Pym, in the House of Commons, and with great sol- 
emnity, impeached the Earl of Strafford as a traitor. He 
was immediately taken into custody and fell from his proud 
height. 

It was the 22d of March before he was brought to trial 
at Westminster Hall; where, although he was very ill and 
suffered great pain, he defended himself with such ability 
and majesty, that it was doubtful whether he would not get 
the best of it. But on the thirteenth day of the trial, Pym 
produced in the House of Commons a copy of some notes of 
a council, found by young Sir Harry Vaxe in a red velvet 
cabinet belonging to his father (Secretary Vane, who sat at 
the council-table with the Earl), in which Strafford had dis- 
tinctly told the king that he was free from all rules and 
obligations of government, and might do with his people 
whatever he liked ; and in which he had added, " You have 
an army in Ireland that you may employ to reduce this 
kingdom to obedience." It was not clear whether by the 
words "this kingdom," he had really meant England or 
Scotland ; but the Parliament contended that he meant 
England, and this was treason. At the same sitting of the 
House of Commons, it was resolved to bring in a bill of 
attainder declaring the treason to have been committed, in 
preference to proceeding with the trial by impeachment, 
which would have required the treason to be proved. 

So a bill was brought in at once, was carried through the 



336 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

House of Commons by a large majority, and was sent up to 
the House of Lords. While it was still uncertain whether 
the House of Lords would pass it and the king consent to 
it, Pym disclosed to the House of Commons that the king 
and queen had both been plotting with the officers of the 
army to bring up the soldiers and control the Parliament, 
and also to introduce two hundred soldiers into the Tower 
of London to effect the earl's escape. The plotting with 
the army was revealed by one George Goring, the son of 
a lord of that name, — a bad fellow, who was one of the ori- 
ginal plotters, and turned traitor. The king had actually 
given his warrant for the admission of the two hundred men 
into the Tower, and they would have got in too, but for the 
refusal of the governor — a sturdy Scotchman of the name 
of Balfour — to admit them. These matters being made 
public, great numbers of people began to riot outside the 
nouses of parliament, and to cry out .for the execution of 
the Earl of Strafford, as one of the king's chief instruments 
against them. The bill passed the House of Lords while the 
people were in this state of agitation, and was laid before 
the king for his assent, together with another bill declaring 
that the Parliament then assembled should not be dissolved 
or adjourned without their own consent. The king — not 
unwilling to save a faithful servant, though he had no great 
attachment for him — was in some doubt what to do; but 
he gave his consent to both bills, although he in his heart 
believed that the bill against the Earl of Strafford was un- 
lawful and unjust. The earl had written to him, telling 
him that he was willing to die for his sake. But he had 
not expected that his royal master would take him at his 
word quite so readily ; for when he heard his doom, he laid * 
his hand upon his heart, and said, " Put not your trust in 
princes ! n 

The king, who never could be straightforward and plain 
through one single day, or through one single sheet of 
paper, wrote a letter to the Lords, and sent it by the young 
Prince of Wales, entreating them to prevail with the Com- 
mons that "that unfortunate man should fulfil the nat- 
ural course of his life in a close imprisonment." In a post- 
script 'to the very same letter, he added, "If he must die, 
it were charity to reprieve him till Saturday." If there 
had been any doubt of his fate, this weakness and mean- 
ness would have settled it. The very next day, which was 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 337 

the 12th of May, he was brought out to be beheaded on 
Tower Hill. 

Archbishop Laud, who had been so fond of having peo- 
ple's ears cropped off and their noses slit, was now confined 
in the Tower too; and when the earl went by his win- 
dow to his death, he was there, at his request, to give him 
his blessing. They had been great friends in the king's 
cause ; and the earl had written to him in the days of their 
power, that he thought it would be an admirable thing to 
have Mr. Hampden publicly whipped for refusing to pay 
the ship-money. However, those high and mighty doings 
were over now, and the earl went his way to death with 
dignity and heroism. The governor wished him to get 
into a coach at the Tower-gate, for fear the people should 
tear him to pieces ; but he said it was all one to him 
whether he died by the axe or by the people's hands. So 
he walked, with a firm tread and a stately look, and some- 
times pulled off his hat to them as he passed along. They 
were profoundly quiet. He made a speech on the scaffold 
from some notes he had prepared (the paper was found 
lying there after his head was struck off) ; and one blow 
of the axe killed him, in the forty-ninth year of his age. 

This bold and daring act the Parliament accompanied 
by other famous measures, all originating (as even this did) 
in the king's having so grossly and so long abused his 
power. The name of Delinquents was applied to all 
sheriffs and other officers who had been concerned in 
raising the ship-money, or any other money, from the peo- 
ple, in an unlawful manner ; the Hampden judgment was 
reversed ; the judges who had decided against Hampden 
were called upon to give large securities that they would 
take such consequences as Parliament might impose upon 
them ; and one was arrested as he sat in high court, 
and carried off to prison. Laud was impeached ; the un- 
fortunate victims whose ears had been cropped and whose 
noses had been slit were brought out of prison in tri- 
umph ; and a bill was passed declaring that a parlia- 
ment should be called every third year, and that, if the 
king and the king's officers did not call it, the people 
should assemble of themselves and summon it, as of their 
own right and power. Great illuminations and rejoicings 
took place over all these things, and the country was 
wildly excited. That the Parliament took advantage of 



338 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

this excitment, and stirred them up by every means, there 
is no doubt ; but you are always to remember those twelve 
long years, during which the king had tried so hard wheth- 
er he really could do any wrong or not. 

All this time there was a great religious outcry against 
the right of the bishops to sit in parliament ; to which 
the Scottish people particularly objected. The English 
were divided on this subject ; and partly on this account, 
and partly because they had had foolish expectations that 
the Parliament would be able to take off nearly all the 
taxes, number^ of them sometimes wavered, and inclined 
towards the king. 

I believe myself, that if at this, or almost any other 
period of his life, the king could have been trusted by 
any man not out of his senses, he might have saved 
himself and kept his throne. But, on the English army 
being disbanded, he plotted with the officers again, as he 
had done before, and established the fact beyond all doubt 
by putting his signature *of approval to a petition against 
the Parliamentary leaders, which was drawn up by cer- 
tain officers. When the Scottish army was disbanded, he »| 
went to Edinburgh in four days — which was going very 
fast at that time — to plot again, and so darkly too, that 
it is difficult to decide what his whole object was. Some 
suppose that he wanted to gain over the Scottish Par- 
liament, as he did in fact gain over, by presents and fa- 
vors, many Scottish lords and men of power. Some think 
that he went to get proofs against the Parliamentary lead- 
ers in England of their having treasonably invited the 
Scottish people to come and help them. With whatever 
object he went to Scotland, he did little good by going. 
At the instigation of the Earl of Montrose, a des- 
perate man who was then in prison, for plotting, he tried 
to kidnap three Scottish lords who escaped. A committee 
of the Parliament at home, who had followed to watch 
him, writing an account of this Incident, as it was 
called, to the Parliament, the Parliament made a fresh 
stir about it ; were, or feigned to be, much alarmed for 
themselves ; and wrote to the Earl of Essex, the com- 
mander-in-chief, for a guard to protect them. 

It is not absolutely proved that the king plotted in 
Ireland Hsides ; but it is very probable that he did, and 
that the queen did, and that he had some wild hope of 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 339 

gaining the Irish people over to his side by favoring a 
rise among them. Whether or no, they did rise in a most 
brutal and savage rebellion ; in which, encouraged by their 
priests, they committed such atrocities npon numbers of 
the English, of both sexes and of all ages, as nobody 
could believe, but for their being related on oath by' eye- 
witnesses. Whether one hundred thousand or two hun- 
dred thousand Protestants were murdered in this outbreak 
is uncertain ; but that it was as ruthless and barbarous 
an outbreak as ever was known among any savage people 
is certain. 

The king came home from Scotland, determined to make 
a great struggle for his lost power. He believed, that, 
through his presents and favors, Scotland would take no 
part against him ; and the Lord Mayor of London received 
him with such a magnificent dinner that he thought he 
must have become popular again in England. It would 
take a good many lord mayors, however, to make a people ; 
and the king soon found himself mistaken. 

Not so soon, though, but that there was a great opposi- 
tion in the Parliament to a celebrated paper put forth by 
Pym and Hampden and the rest, called "The Remon- 
strance ; " which set forth all the illegal acts that the king 
had ever done, but politely laid the blame of them on his 
gbad advisers. Even when it was passed, and presented to 
"him, the king still thought himself strong enough to dis- 
charge Balfour from his command in the Tower, and to put 
in his place a man of bad character, to whom the Commons 
instantly objected, and whom he was obliged to abandon. 
At this time, the old outcry about the bishops became loud- 
. er than ever ; and the old Archbishop of York was so near 
being murdered as he went down to the House of Lords, — 
being laid hold of by the mob and violently knocked about, 
in return for very foolishly scolding a shrill boy who was 
yelping out "No bishops ! " — that he sent for all the bishops 
.who were in town, and proposed to them to sign a declara- 
tion, that, as they could no longer without danger to their 
lives attend their duty in Parliament, they protested against 
the lawfulness of every thing done in their absence. This 
they asked the king to send to the House of Lords, which 
he did. Then the House of Commons impeached the whole 
parly of bishops, and sent them off to the Tower. 

Taking no warning from this, but encouraged by there 



340 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

being a moderate party in the Parliament who objected to 
these strong measures, the king, on the 3d of January, 
1642, took the rashest step that ever was taken by mortal 
man. 

Of his own accord and without advice, he sent the attor- 
ney-general to the House of Lords, to accuse of treason 
certain members of Parliament who as popular leaders were 
the most obnoxious to him : Lord Kimbolton, Sir Arthur 
Haselrig, Denzil Hollis, John Pym (they used to call 
him King Pym, he possessed such power and looked so big), 
John Hampden, and William Strode. The houses of 
those members he caused to be entered, and their papers to 
be sealed up. At the same time, he sent a messenger to 
the House of Commons demanding to have the five gentle- 
men who were members of that House immediately pro- 
duced. To this the House replied that they should, appear 
as soon as there was any legal charge against them, and 
immediately adjourned. 

Next day, the House of Commons sent into the city to 
let the lord mayor know that their privileges are invaded 
by the king, and that there is no safety for anybody or any 
thing. Then, when the five members are gone out of the 
way, down comes the king himself, with all his guard, and 
from two to three hundred gentlemen and soldiers, of whom 
the greater part were armed. These he leaves in the hall; 
and then, with his nephew at his side, goes into the House, 
takes off his hat, and walks up to the speaker's chair. The 
speaker leaves it, the king stands in front of it, looks about 
him steadily for a little while, and says he has come for 
those five members. No one speaks, and then he calls \ 
John Pym by name. No one speaks, and then he calk ' 
Denzil Hollis by name. No one speaks, and then he asks 
the Speaker of the House where those five members are? 
The speaker, answering on his knee, nobly replies that he I 
is the servant of that House, and that he has neither eyes 
to see, nor tongue to speak, any thing but what the House 
commands him. Upon this, the king, beaten from that 
time evermore, replies that he will seek them himself, for 
they have committed treason ; and goes out, with his hat in 
his hand, amid some audible murmurs from the members. 

No words can describe the hurry that arose out of doors 
when all this, was known. The five members had gone for 
safety to a house in Coleman Street, in the city, where they 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 341 

were guarded all night ; and indeed the whole city watched 
in arms like an army. At ten o'clock in the morning, the 
king, already frightened at what he had done, came to the 
Guildhall, with only half a dozen lords, and made a speech 
to the people, hoping they would not shelter those whom 
he accused of treason. Next day," he issued a proclamation 
for the apprehension of the five members ; hut the Parlia- 
ment minded it so little, that they made great arrangements 
for having them brought down to Westminster in great 
state, five days afterwards. The king was so alarmed now 
at his own imprudence, if not for his own safety, that he 
left his palace at Whitehall, and went away with his queen 
and children to Hampton Court. 

It was the 11th of May, when the five members were 
carried in state and triumph to Westminster. They 
were taken by water. The river could not be seen for the 
boats on it; and the five members were hemmed in by 
barges fult of men and great guns, ready to protect them 
at any cost. Along the Strand a large body of the train- 
bands of London, under their commander, Skippon, 
marched to be ready to assist the little fleet. Beyond 
them, came a crowd who choked the streets, roaring inces- 
santly about the bishops and the papists, and crying out 
contemptuously as they passed Whitehall, " What has 
become of the king ? " With this great noise outside 
the House of Commons, and with great silence within, Mr. 
Pym rose, and informed the House of the great kindness 
with which they had been received in the city. Upon 
that the House called the sheriffs in and thanked them, and 
requested the train-bands, under their commander Skippon, 
to guard the House of Commons every day. Then came 
four thousand men on horseback out of Buckinghamshire, 
offering their services as a guard too, and bearing a petition 
to the king, complaining of the injury that had been done 
to Mr. Hampden, who was their county-man and much 
beloved and honored. 

When the king set off for Hampton Court, the gentle- 
men and soldiers who had been with him followed him out 
of town as far as Kingston-upon-Thames ; next day, Lord 
Digby came to them from the king at Hampton Court, in 
in his coach and six, to inform them that the king accepted 
their protection. This, the Parliament said, was making 
war against the kingdom; and Lord Digby fled abroad. 



342 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The Parliament then immediately applied themselves tc 
getting hold of the military power of the country, well' 
knowing that the king was already trying hard to use it; 
against them, and that he had secretly sent the Earl of! 
Newcastle to Hull, to secure a valuable magazine of arms! 
and gunpowder that was there. In those times, every 
county had its own magazines of arms and powder, for its 
own train-bands or militia; so the Parliament brought in a; 
bill claiming the right (which up to this time had belonged; 
to the king) of appointing the lord lieutenants of counties, 
who commanded these train-bands ; also, of having all the 
forts, castles, and garrisons in the kingdom put into the^ 
hands of such governors as they, the Parliament, could con- 
fide in. It also passed a law depriving the bishops of their I 
votes. The king gave his assent to that bill, but would not 
abandon the right of appointing the lord lieutenants, 
though he said he was willing to appoint such as might be 
suggested to him by the Parliament. When the Earl of j 
Pembroke asked him whether he would not give way on ! 
that question for a time,' he said, "By God! not for one 
hour ; " and upon this he and the Parliament went to ', 
war. 

His young daughter was betrothed to the Prince of 
Orange. On pretence of taking her to the country of her I 
future husband, the queen was already got safely away to j 
Holland, there to pawn the crown-jewels for money to raise I 
an army on the king's side. The lord a'dmiral being sick, 
the House of Commons now named the Earl of Warwick 
to hold his place for a year. The king named another gen- 
tleman ; the House of Commons took its own way, and the 
Earl of Warwick became lord admiral without the king's 
consent. The Parliament sent orders down to Hull to have 
that magazine removed to London ; the king went down to 
take it himself. The citizens would not admit him into the 
town, and the governor would not admit him into the castle. 
The Parliament resolved, that, whatever the two Houses 
passed, and the king would not consent to, should be called 
an Ordinance, and should be as much a law as if he did 
consent to it. The king protested against this, and gave 
notice that these ordinances were not to be obeyed. The 
king, attended by the majority of the House of Peers, and 
by many members of the House of Commons, established 
himself at York. The chancellor went to him with tho 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 343 

Great Seal, and the Parliament made a new Great Seal. 
The queen sent over a ship full of arms and ammunition, 
and the king issued letters to borrow money at high interest. 
The Parliament raised twenty regiments of foot and sev- 
enty-five troops of horse ; and the people willingly aided 
them with their money, plate, jewelry, and trinkets, — the 
married women even with their wedding-rings. Every 
member of parliament who could raise a troop or a regi- 
ment in his own part of the country dressed it according 
to his taste and in his own colors, and commanded it. 
Foremost among them all, Oliver Cromwell raised a 
troop of horse, thoroughly in earnest and thoroughly well 
armed, who were, perhaps, the best soldiers that ever were 
seen. 

In some of their proceedings, this famous Parliament 
passed the bounds of previous law and custom, yielded to 
and favored riotous assemblages of the people, and. acted 
tyrannically in imprisoning some who differed from the pop- 
ular leaders. But again, you are always to remember that 
the twelve years during which the king had had his own 
wilful way had gone before ; and that nothing could make 
the times what they might, could, would, or should have 
been, if those twelve years had never rolled away. 

Third Part. 

I shall not try to relate the particulars of the great 
civil war between King Charles the First and the Long 
Parliament, which lasted nearly four years, and a full ac- 
count of which would fill many large books. It was a sad 
thing that Englishmen should once more be fighting against 
Englishmen on English ground ; but it is some consolation 
to know that on both sides there was great humanity, for- 
bearance, and honor. The soldiers of the Parliament were 
far more remarkable for these good qualities than the sol- 
diers of the king (many of whom fought for mere pay, with- 
out much caring for the cause) ; but those of the nobility and 
gentry who were on the king's side were so brave, and so 
faithful to him, that their conduct cannot but command our 
highest admiration. Among them were great numbers of 
Catholics, who took the royal side because the queen was so 
strongly of their persuasion. 

The king might have distinguished some of these gallant 



344 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

spirits, if he had heen as generous a spirit himself, by- 
giving them the command of his army. Instead of that, 
however, true to his old high notions of royalty, he in- 
trusted it to his two nephews, Prince Rupert and Prince 
Maurice, who were of royal blood, and came over from 
abroad to help him. It might have been better for him if 
they had staid away ; since Prince Rupert was an impetu- 
ous, hot-headed fellow, whose only idea was to dash into 
battle at all times and seasons, and lay about him. 

The general-in-chief of the Parliamentary army was the 
Earl of Essex, a gentleman of honor and an excellent sol- 
dier. A little while before the war broke out, there had 
been some rioting at Westminster, between certain officious 
law-students and noisy soldiers, and the shopkeepers and 
their apprentices and the general people in the streets. At 
that time the king's friends called the crowd Roundheads, 
because the apprentices wore short hair; the crowd, in 
return, called their opponents Cavaliers, meaning that they 
Were a blustering set, who pretended to be very military. 
These two words now began to be used to distinguish the 
two sides in the civil war. The royalists also called the 
parliamentary men Rebels and Rogues, while the parlia- 
ment men called them Malignants, and spoke of themselves 
as the Godly, the Honest, &c. 

The war broke out at Portsmouth, where that double 
traitor Goring had again gone over to the king, and was 
besieged by the Parliamentary troops. Upon this, the king 
proclaimed- the Earl of Essex, and the officers serving under 
him, traitors, and called upon his loyal subjects to meet him 
in arms, at Nottingham, on the 25th of August. But his 
loyal subjects came about him in scanty numbers ; and it 
was a windy, gloomy day, and the royal standard got blown 
down ; and the whole affair was very melancholy. The chief 
engagements after this took place in the vale of the Red 
Horse near Banbury, at Brentford, at Devizes, at Chalgrave 
Field (where Mr. Hampden was so sorely wounded, while 
fighting at the head of his men, that he died within a 
week), at Newbury (in which battle Lord Falkland, one 
of the best noblemen on the king's side, was killed), at 
Leicester, at Naseby, at Winchester, at Marston Moor near 
York, at Newcastle, and in many other parts of England 
and Scotland. These battles were attended with various 
successes. At one time, the king was victorious ; at another 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 345 

time, the Parliament. But almost all the great and busy 
towns were against the king ; and when it was considered 
necessary to fortify London, all ranks of people, from labor- 
ing men and women up to lords and ladies, worked hard 
together with heartiness and good will. The most distin- 
guished leaders on the Parliamentary side were Hampden, 
Sir Thomas Fairfax, and, above all, Oliver Cromwell, 
and his son-in-law Ireton. 

During the whole of this war, the people, to whom it was 
very expensive and irksome, and to whom it was made the 
more distressing by almost every family being divided, — 
some of its members attaching themselves to one side and 
some to the other, — were over and over again most anxious 
for peace. So were some of the best men in each cause. 
Accordingly, treaties of peace were discussed between com- 
missioners from the Parliament and the king, — at York, at 
Oxford (where the king held a little parliament of his 
own), and_at Uxbridge. But they came to nothing. In 
all these negotiations, and in all his difficulties, the king 
showed himself at his best. He was courageous, cool, self- 
possessed, and clever; but the old taint of his character 
was always in him, and he was never for one single moment 
to be trusted. Lord Clarendon the historian, one of his 
highest admirers, supposes that he had unhappily promised 
the queen never to make peace without her consent, and 
that this must often be taken as his excuse. He never 
kept his word from night to morning. He signed a cessa- 
tion of hostilities with the blood-stained Irish rebels for 
a sum of money, and invited the Irish regiments over to 
help him against the Parliament. In the battle of Naseby, 
his cabinet was seized, and was found to contain a corre- 
spondence with the queen, in which he expressly told her 
that he had deceived the Parliament, — a mongrel parlia- 
ment, he called it now, as an improvement on his old term 
of vipers, — in pretending to recognize it, and to treat with 
it ; and from which it further appeared that he had long 
been in secret treaty with the Duke of Lorraine for a 
foreign army of ten thousand men. Disappointed in this, 
he sent a most devoted friend of his, the Earl of Gla- 
morgan, to Ireland, to conclude a secret treaty with the 
Catholic powers, to send him an Irish army of ten thousand 
men ; in return for which he was to bestow great favors on 
the Catholic religion. And when this treaty was dis- 



346 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

covered in the carriage of a fighting Irish archbishop who 
was killed in one of the many skirmishes of those days, he 
basely denied and deserted his attached friend, the earl, on 
his being charged with high treason ; and — even worse 
than this — had left blanks in the secret instructions he 
gave him with his own kingly hand, expressly that he 
might thus save himself. 

At last, on the 27th day of April, 1646, the king found 
himself ■ in the city of Oxford, so surrounded by the 
Parliamentary army, who were closing in upon him on all 
sides, that he felt that if he would escape he must 
delay no longer. So that night, having altered the cut 
of his hair and beard, he was dressed up as a servant, and 
put upon a horse with a cloak strapped behind him, 
and rode out of the town behind one of his own faithful 
followers, with a clergyman of that country, who knew 
the road well, for a guide. He rode towards London as 
far as Harrow, and then altered his plans, and resolved, 
it would seem, to go to the Scottish camp. The Scottish 
men had been invited over to help the Parliamentary 
army, and had a large force then in England. The 
king was so desperately intriguing in every thing he did, 
that it is doubtful what he exactly meant by this step. 
He took it, anyhow, and delivered himself up to the Earl 
of Leven, the Scottish general-in-chief, who treated him 
as an honorable prisoner. Negotiations between the Par- 
liament on the one hand, and the Scottish authorities on the 
other, as to what should be done with him, lasted until 
the following February. Then, when the king had refused 
to the Parliament the concession of that old militia point 
for twenty years, and had refused to Scotland the recogni- 
tion of its solemn league and covenant, Scotland got a 
handsome sum for its army and its help, and the king into 
the bargain. He was taken, by certain Parliamentary 
commissioners appointed to receive him, to one of his own 
houses, called Holmby House, near Althorpe,-in North- 
amptonshire. 

While the civil war was still in progress, John Pym died, 
and was buried with great honor in Westminster Abbey, — 
not with greater honor than he deserved, for the liberties of 
Englishmen owe a mighty debt to Pym and Hampden. 
The war was but newly over when the Earl of Essex died, 
of an illness brought on by his having overheated himself 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 347 

in a stag-hunt in Windsor Forest. He, too, was buried in 
Westminster Abbey, with great state. I wish it were not 
necessary to add that Archbishop Laud died upon the scaf- 
fold, when the war was not yet done. His trial lasted in 
all nearly a year; and, it being doubtful even then whether 
the charges brought against him amounted to treason, the 
odious old contrivance of the worst kings was resorted to, 
and a bill of attainder, was brought in against him. He 
was a violently prejudiced and mischievous person ; had 
had strong ear-cropping and nose-splitting propensities, as 
you know ; and had done a world o'f harm. But he died 
peaceably, and like a brave old man. 

Fourth Part. 

When the Parliament had got the king into their hands, 
they became very anxious to get rid of their army, in 
which Oliver Cromwell had begun to acquire great power ; 
not only "because of his courage and high abilities, but 
because he professed to be very sincere in the Scottish 
sort of Puritan religion, that was then exceedingly pop- 
ular among the soldiers. They were as much opposed 
to the bishops as to the Pope himself; and the very pri- 
vates, drummers, and trumpeters had such an inconvenient 
habit of starting up and preaching long-winded discourses, 
that I would not have belonged to that army on any 
account. 

So the Parliament, being far from sure but that the army 
might begin to preach and fight against them, now it had 
nothing else to do, proposed to disband the greater part of 
it, to send another part to serve in Ireland against the 
rebels, and to keep only a small force in England. But 
the army would not consent to be broken up, except upon 
its own conditions ; and when the Parliament showed an 
intention of compelling it, it acted for itself in an unex- 
pected manner. A certain cornet, of the name of Joice, 
arrived at Holmby House one night, attended by four 
hundred horsemen, went into the king's- room with his hat 
in one hand and a pistol in the other, and told the king 
that lie had come to take him away. The king was willing 
enough to go, and only stipulated that he should be publicly 
required to do so next morning. The next morning, ac- 
cordingly, he appeared on the top of the steps of the house, 



348 ' A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and asked Cornet Joice before his men and the guard set 
there by the Parliament, what authority he had for taking 
him away ? To this Cornet Joice replied, " The authority 
of the army." — " Have you a written commission ? " said 
the king. Joice, pointing to his four hundred men on 
horseback, replied, " That is my commission." — " Well," 
said the king, smiling as if he were pleased, " I never be- 
fore read such a commission j but it is written in a fair 
and legible characters. This is a company of as handsome 
proper gentlemen as I. have seen a long while." He was 
asked where he would like to live, and he said at New- 
market. So to Newmarket he and Cornet Joice and the 
four hundred horsemen rode; the king remarking, in the 
same smiling way, that he could ride as far at a spell as 
Cornet Joice, or any man there. 

The king quite believed, I think, that the army were his 
friends. He said as much to Fairfax when that general, 
Oliver Cromwell, and Ireton went to persuade him to 
return to the custody of the Parliament. He preferred to 
remain as he was, and resolved to remain as he was. And 
when the army moved nearer and nearer to London to 
frighten the Parliament into yielding to their demands, 
they took the king with them. It was a deplorable thing 
that England should be at the mercy of a great body of 
soldiers with arms in their hands ; but the king certainly 
favored them, at this important time of his life, as compared 
with the more lawful power that tried to control him. It 
must be added, however, that they treated him, as yet, 
more respectfully and kindly than the Parliament had done. 
They allowed him to be attended by his own servants, to 
be splendidly entertained at various houses, and to see his 
children — at Cavesham House, near Beading — for two 
days. Whereas the Parliament had been rather hard with 
him, and had only allowed him to ride out and play at 
bowls. 

It is much to be believed, that if the king could have 
been trusted, even at this time, he might have been saved. 
Even Oliver Cromwell expressly said that he did believe 
that no man could enjoy his possessions in peace unless 
the king had his rights. He was not unfriendly towards 
the king ; he had been present when he received his child- 
ren, and had been much affected by the pitiable nature of 
the scene ; he saw the king often ; he frequently walked 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 349 

and talked with him in the long galleries and pleasant gar- 
dens of the Palace at Hampton Court, whither he was now 
removed ; and in all this risked something of his influence 
with the army. But the king was in secret hopes of help 
from the Scottish people ; and the moment he was en- 
couraged to join them he hegan to be cool to his new friends, 
the army, and to tell the officers that they could not possibly 
do without him. At the very time, too, when he was prom- 
ising to make Cromwell and Ire ton noblemen, if they 
would help him up to his old height, he was writing to the 
queen that he meant to hang them. They both afterwards 
declared that they had been privately informed that such a 
letter would be found, on a certain evening, sewed up in a 
saddle which would be taken to Blue Boar in Holborn to 
be sent to Dover; and that they went there, disguised as 
common soldiers, and sat drinking in the inn-yard until a 
man came with the saddle, which they ripped up with their 
knives, and therein found the letter. I see little reason to 
doubt the story. It is certain that Oliver Cromwell told 
one of the king's most faithful followers that the king 
could not be trusted, and that he would not be answerable 
if any thing amiss were to happen to him. Still, even after 
that, he kept a promise he had made to the king, by letting 
him know that there was a plot with a certain portion of 
the army to seize him. I believe that, in fact, he sincerely 
wanted the king to escape abroad, and so to be got rid of 
without more trouble or danger. That Oliver himself had 
work enough with the army is pretty plain ; for some of 
the troops were so mutinous against him, and against those 
who acted with him at this time, that he found it necessary 
to have one man shot at the head of his regiment to 
overawe the rest. 

The king, when he received Oliver's warning, made his 
escape from Hampton Court; after some indecision and 
uncertainty, he went to Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of 
Wight. At first he was pretty free there ; but even there, 
he carried on a pretended treaty with the Parliament, while 
he was really treating with commissioners from Scotland to 
send an army into England to take his part. When he 
broke off this treaty with the Parliament (having settled 
with Scotland), and was treated as a prisoner, his treatment 
was not changed too soon, for he had plotted to escape that 



350 A CHILD S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

very night to a ship sent by the queen, which was lying 

off the island. 

He was doomed to be disappointed in his hopes from 
Scotland. The agreement he had made with the Scottish 
Commissioners was not favorable enough to the religion of 
that country to please the Scottish clergy; and they 
preached against it. The consequence was, that the army 
raised in Scotland and sent over was too small to do 
much ; and that, although it was helped by a rising of the 
royalists in England and by good soldiers from Ireland, 
it could make no head against the Parliamentary army 
under such men as Cromwell and Fairfax. The king's 
eldest son, the Prince of Wales, came over from Holland 
with nineteen ships (a part of the English fleet having 
gone over to him) to help his father : but nothing came of 
his voyage, and he was fain to return. The most remark- 
able event of this # second civil war was the cruel execution 
by the parliamentary general of Sir Charles Lucas and 
Sir George Lisle, two grand royalist generals, who had 
bravely defended Colchester under every disadvantage of 
famine and distress for nearly three months. When Sir 
Charles Lucas was shot, Sir George Lisle kissed his 
body, and said to the soldiers who were to shoot him, 
" Come nearer, and make sure of me." — "I warrant you, 
Sir George," said one of the soldiers, "we shall hit you." 
" Ah ! " he returned with a smile ; " but I have been nearer 
to you, my friends, many a- time, and you have missed 
me." 

The Parliament, after being fearfully bullied by the 
army, — who demanded to have seven members whom they 
disliked given iip to them, — had voted that they would 
have nothing more to do with the king. On the conclusion, 
however, of this second civil war (which did not last more 
than six months), they appointed commissioners to treat 
with him. The king, then so far released again as to be 
allowed to live in a private house at Newport in the Isle of 
Wight, managed his own part of the negotiation with a 
sense that was admired by all who saw him, and gave up, 
in the end, all that was asked of him, — even yielding 
(which he had steadily refused so far) to the temporary 
abolition of the bishops, and the transfer of their church 
land to the crown. Still with his old fatal vice upon him. 
when his best friends joined the commissioners in beseech- 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 351 

ing him to yield all those points as the only means of saving 
himself from the army, he was plotting to escape from the 
island ; he was holding correspondence with his friends and 
the Catholics in Ireland, though declaring that he was not; 
and he was writing, with his own hand, that, in what he 
yielded, he meant nothing but to get time to escape. 

Matters were at this pass when the army, resolved to defy 
the Parliament, marched up to London. The Parliament, 
not afraid of them now, and boldly led by Hollis, voted 
that the king's concessions were sufficient ground for 
settling the peace of the kingdom. Upon that Col. Eich 
and Col. Pejde went down to the House of Commons 
with a regiment of horse-soldiers and a regiment of foot ; 
and Col. Pride, standing in the lobby with a list of the 
members who were obnoxious to the army in his hand, had 
them pointed out to him as they came through, and took 
them all into custody. This proceeding was afterwards 
called by the people, for a joke, Pride's Purge. Crom- 
well was in the North, at the head of his men, at the time, 
but, when he came home, approved of what had been 
done. 

What with imprisoning some members, and causing 
others to stay away, the army had now reduced the House 
of Commons to some fifty or so. These soon voted that it was 
treason in a king to make war against his parliament and 
his people, and sent an ordinance up to the House of Lords 
for the king's being tried as a traitor. The House of 
Lords, then sixteen in number, to a man rejected it. There- 
upon, the Commons made an ordinance of their own, that 
they were the supreme government of the country, and 
would bring the king to trial. 

The king had been taken for security to a place called 
Hurst Castle, — a lonely house on a rock in the sea, con- 
nected with the coast of Hampshire by a rough road two 
miles long at low water. Thence he was ordered to be 
removed to Windsor ; thence, after being but rudely used 
there, and having none but soldiers to wait upon him at 
table, he was brought up to St. -James's Palace in London, 
and told that his trial was appointed for next day. 

On Saturday, the 20th of January, 1649, this memorable 
trial began. The House of Commons had settled . that a 
hundred and thirty-five persons should form the court ; and 
these were taken from the House itself, from among the 



352 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

officers of the army, and from among the lawyers and 
citizens. John Bradshaw, serjeant-at-law, was appointed 
president. The place was Westminster Hall. At the 
upper end, in a red velvet chair, sat the president, with his 
hat (lined with plates of iron for his protection) on his 
head. The rest of the court sat on side benches, also wear- 
ing their hats. The king's seat was covered with velvet, 
like that of the president, and was opposite to it. He was 
brought from St. James's to Whitehall, and from Whitehall 
he came by water to his trial. 

When he came in he looked round very steadily on the 
court, and on the great number of spectators, and then sat 
down ; presently he got up and looked round again. On 
the indictment " against Charles Stuart, for high treason," 
being read, he smiled several times; and he denied the 
authority of the court, saying that there could be no parlia- 
ment without a House of Lords, and that he saw no House 
of Lords there. Also that the king ought to be there, and 
that he saw no king in the king's right place. Bradshaw 
replied, that the court was satisfied with its authority, and 
that its authority was God's authority and the kingdom's. 
He then adjourned the court to the following Monday. On 
that day the trial was resumed, and went on all the week. 
When the Saturday came, as the king passed forward to 
his place in the hall, some soldiers and others cried for 
"justice ! " and execution on him. That day, too, Bradshaw, 
like an angry sultan, wore a red robe, instead of the black 
robe he had worn before. The king was sentenced to death 
that day. As he went out, one solitary soldier said, " God 
bless you, sir ! " For this his officer struck him. The king 
said he thought the punishment exceeded the offence. 
The silver head of his walking-stick had fallen off while 
he leaned upon it, at one time of the trial. The accident 
seemed to disturb him, as if he thought it ominous of the 
falling of his own head ; and he admitted as much, now it 
was all over. 

Being taken back to Whitehall, he sent to the House of 
Commons, saying, that, as the time of his execution might 
be nigh, he wished he might be allowed to see his darling 
children. It was granted. On the Monday he was taken 
back to St. James's ; and his two children then in England, 
the Princess Elizabeth, thirteen years old, and the 
Duke op Gloucester, nine years old, were brought to 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 353 

take leave of him, from Sion House, near Brentford. It 
was a sad and touching scene, when he kissed and fondled 
those poor children, and made a little present of two dia- 
mond seals to the princess, and gave them tender messages 
to their mother (who little deserved them, for she had a 
lover of her own whom she married soon afterwards), and 
told them that he died " for the laws and lfberties of the 
land." I am bound to say that I don't think he did; but I 
dare say he believed so. 

There were ambassadors from Holland, that day, to inter- 
cede for the unhappy king, whom you and I both wish the 
Parliament had spared; but they got no answer. The 
Scottish commissioners interceded too ; so did the Prince 
of Wales, by a letter in which he offered, as the next heir 
to the throne, to accept any conditions from the Parliament ; 
so did the queen, by letter likewise. Notwithstanding all, 
the warrant for the execution was this day signed. There 
is a story>.that, as Oliver Cromwell went to the table with 
the pen in his hand to put his signature to it, he drew his 
pen across the face of one of the commissioners, who was 
standing near, and marked it with ink. That commissioner 
had not signed his own name yet ; and the story adds, that, 
when he came to do it, he marked Cromwell's face with ink 
in the same way. 

The king slept well, untroubled by the knowledge that 
it was his last night on earth, and rose on the 30th of Jan- 
uary, two hours before day, and dressed himself carefully. 
He put on two shirts, lest he should tremble with the 
cold, and had his hair very carefully combed. The war- 
rant had been directed to. three officers of the army, — 
Col. Hacker, Col. Hunks, and Col. Phayer. At ten 
o'clock, the first of these came to the door, and said it 
was time to go to Whitehall. The king, who had always 
been a quick walker, walked at his usual speed through the 
park, and called out to the guard, with his accustomed voice 
of command, " March on, apace ! " When he came to 
Whitehall, he was taken to his own bedroom, where a 
breakfast was set forth. As he had taken the sacrament, 
he would eat nothing more ; but at about the time when 
the church-bells struck twelve at noon (for he had to wait, 
through the scaffold not being ready), he took the advice of 
the good Bishop Juxon who was with him, and ate a 
little bread, and drank a glass of claret. Soon after he had 

30* 



354 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

taken this refreshment, Col. Hacker came to the chamber 
with the warrant in his hand, and called for Charles Stuart. 

And then, through the long gallery of Whitehall Palace, 
which he had often seen light and gay and merry and 
crowded, in very different times, the fallen king passed 
along, until he came to the centre window of the Banquet- 
ing House, through which he emerged upon the scaffold, 
which was hung with black. He looked at the two execu- 
tioners, who were dressed in black and masked ; he looked 
at the troops of soldiers on horseback and on foot, and all 
looked up at him in silence ; he looked at the vast array of 
spectators, filling up the view beyond, and turning all their 
faces upon him ; he looked at his old Palace of St. James's ; 
and he looked at the block. He seemed a little troubled to 
find that it was so low, and asked, " if there were no place 
higher." Then, to those upon the scaffold, he said, " that 
it was the Parliament who had begun the war, and not he ; 
but he hoped they might be guiltless too, as ill instruments 
had gone between them. In one respect/' he said, " he suf- 
fered justly; and that was because he had permitted an 
unjust sentence to be executed on another." In this he 
referred to the Earl of Strafford. 

He was not at all afraid to die ; but he was anxious to 
die easily. When some one touched the axe while he was 
speaking, he broke off and called out, " Take heed of the 
axe ; take heed of the axe ! " He also said to Col. 
Hacker, " Take care that they do not put me to pain.*" He 
told the executioner, " I shall say but very short prayers, 
and then thrust out my hands," — as the sign to strike. 

He put his hair up under a white satin cap, which the 
bishop had carried, and said, " I have a good cause and a 
gracious God on my side." The bishop told him that he 
had but one stage more to travel in this weary world, and 
that, though it was a turbulent and troublesome stage, it 
was a short one, and would carry him a great way, — all the 
way from earth to heaven. The king's last word, as he 
gave his cloak and the George — the decoration from his 
breast — to the bishop, was, " Remember ! " He then 
kneeled down, laid his head on the block, spread out his 
hands, and was instantly killed. One universal groan broke 
from the crowd; and the soldiers, who had sat on their 
horses and stood in their ranks immovable as statues, were 
of a sudden all in motion, clearing the streets. 



CHARLES THE FIRST. 355 

Thus, in the forty-ninth year of his age, falling at the 
same time of his career as Strafford had fallen in his, perished 
Charles the First. With all my sorrow for him, I cannot 
agree with him that he died " the martyr of the people ; " 
for the people had been martyrs to him, and to his ideas of 
a king's rights, long before. Indeed, I am afraid that he 
was but a bad judge of martyrs ; for he had called that 
infamous Duke of Buckingham "the Martyr of his 
Sovereign." 



356 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL. 

Before sunset, on the memorable day on which King 
Charles the First was executed, the House of Commons 
passed an act declaring it treason in any one to proclaim 
the Prince of Wales, or anybody else, King of England. 
Soon afterwards, it declared that the House of Lords was 
useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished ; and di- 
rected that the late king's statue should be taken down 
from the Boyal Exchange in the city, and other public 
places. Having laid hold of some famous royalists who had 
escaped from prison, and having beheaded the Duke of 
Hamilton, Loud Holland, and Lord Capel, in Palace 
Yard (all of whom died very courageously), they then ap- 
pointed a Council of State to govern the country. . It con- 
sisted of forty-one members, of whom five were peers. 
Bradshaw was made president. The House of Commons 
also re-admitted members who had opposed the king's 
death, and made up its numbers to about a hundred and 
fifty. 

But it still had an army of more than forty thousand 
men to deal with, and a very hard task it was to manage 
them. Before the king's execution, the army had appointed 
some of its officers to remonstrate between them and the 
Parliament ; and now the common soldiers began to take 
that office upon themselves. The regiments under orders 
for Ireland mutinied; one troop of horse in the city of 
London seized their own flag, and refused to obey orders. 
For this, the ringleader was shot : which did not mend the 
matter; for both his comrades and the people made a public 
funeral for him, and accompanied the body to the grave 
with sound of trumpets, and with a gloomy procession of 
persons carrying bundles of rosemary steeped in blood. 
Oliver was the only man to deal with such difficulties as 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 357 

these ; and he soon cut them short by bursting at midnight 
into the town of Burford, near Salisbury, where the muti- 
neers were sheltered, taking four hundred of them prison- 
ers, and shooting a number of them by sentence of court- 
martial. The soldiers soon found, as all men did, that Oli- 
ver was not a man to be trifled with. And there was an 
end of the mutiny. 

The Scottish Parliament did not know Oliver yet ; so, on 
hearing of the king's execution, it proclaimed the Prince 
of Wales, King Charles the Second, on condition of his re- 
specting vthe Solemn League and Covenant. Charles was 
abroad at that time, and so was Montrose, from whose help 
he had hopes enough to keep him holding on and off with 
commissioners from Scotland, just as his father might have 
done. These hopes were soon at an end ; for Montrose, 
having raised a few hundred exiles in Germany, and landed 
with them in Scotland, found that the people there, instead 
of joining him, deserted the country at his approach. He 
was soon taken prisoner, and carried to Edinburgh. There 
he was received with every possible insult, and carried to 
prison in a cart, his officers going two and two before him. 
He was sentenced by the Parliament to be hanged on a gal- 
lows thirty feet high, to have his head set on a spike in Ed- 
inburgh, and his linibs distributed in other places, according 
to the old barbarous manner. He said he had always acted 
under the royal orders, and only wished he had limbs enough 
to be distributed through Christendom, that it might be the 
more widely known how loyal he had been. He went to 
the scaffold in a bright and brilliant dress, and made a bold 
end at thirty-eight years of age. The breath was scarcely 
out of his body when Charles abandoned his memory, and 
denied that he had ever given him orders to rise in his 
behalf. Oh, the family failing was strong in that Charles 
then ! 

Oliver had been appointed by the Parliament to command 
the army in Ireland, where he took a terrible vengeance for 
the sanguinary rebellion, and made tremendous havoc, par- 
ticularly in the siege of Drogheda, where no quarter was 
given, and where he found at least a thousand of the inhab- 
itants shut up together in the great church, every one of 
whom was killed by his soldiers, usually known as Oliver's 
Ironsides. There were numbers of friars and priests 
among them; and Oliver gruffly wrote home in his de- 



358 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

spatch that these were "knocked on the head" like the 

rest. 

But Charles having got over to Scotland, where the men 
of the Solemn League and Covenant led him a prodigiously 
dull life, and made him very weary with long sermons and 
grim Sundays, the Parliament called the redoubtable Oliver 
home to knock the Scottish men on the head for setting up 
that prince. Oliver left his son-in-law, Ireton, as general in 
Ireland, in his stead (he died there afterwards), and he imi- 
tated the example of his father-in-law with such good will, 
that he brought the country to subjection, and laid it at the 
feet of the Parliament. In the end, they passed an act for the 
settlement of Ireland, generally pardoning all the common 
people, but exempting from this grace such of the wealthier 
sort as had been concerned in the rebellion, or in any killing 
of Protestants, or who refused to lay down their arms. 
Great numbers of Irish were got out of the country to serve 
under Catholic powers abroad ; and a quantity of land was 
declared to have been forfeited by past offences, and was 
given to people who had lent money to the Parliament early 
in the war. These were sweeping measures ; but if Oliver 
Cromwell had had his own way fully, and had staid in 
Ireland, he would have done more yet. 

However, as I have said, the Parliament wanted Oliver 
for Scotland; so home Oliver came, and was made com- 
mander of all the forces of the Commonwealth of England, 
and in three days away he went with sixteen thousand sol- 
diers to fight the Scottish men. Now, the Scottish men 
being then — as you will generally find them now — mighty 
cautious, reflected that the troops they had were not used 
to war like the Ironsides, and would be beaten in an open 
fight. Therefore they said, " If we lie quiet in our trenches 
in Edinburgh here, and if all the farmers come into the town 
and desert the country, the Ironsides will be driven out by 
iron hunger, and be forced to go away." This was, no 
doubt, the wisest plan ; but as the Scottish clergy would 
interfere with what they knew nothing about, and would 
perpetually preach long sermons, exhorting the soldiers to 
come out and fight, the soldiers got it in their heads that 
they absolutely must come out and fight. Accordingly, in 
an evil hour for themselves, they came out of their safe 
position. Oliver fell upon them instantly, and killed three 
thousand, and took ten thousand prisoners. 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 359 

To gratify the Scottish Parliament, and preserve their 
favor, Charles had signed a declaration they laid before 
him, reproaching the memory of his father and mother, 
and representing himself as a most religious prince, to 
whom the Solemn League and Covenant was as dear as life. 
He meant no sort of truth in this, and soon afterwards 
galloped away on horseback to join some tiresome Highland 
friends, who were always flourishing dirks and broadswords. 
He was overtaken, and induced to return ; but this attempt, 
which was called " The Start," did him just so much ser- 
vice, that they did not preach quite such long sermons at 
him afterwards as they had done before. 

On the 1st of January, 1651, the Scottish people crowned 
him at Scone. He immediately took the chief command 
of an army of twenty thousand men, and marched to Stir- 
ling. His hopes were heightened, I daresay, by the 
redoubtable Oliver being ill of an ague ; but Oliver 
scrambled- out of bed in no time, and went to work with 
such energy that he got behind the royalist army, and cut 
it oif from* all communication with Scotland. There was 
nothing for it then but to go on to England ; so it went on 
as far as Worcester, where the mayor and some of the 
gentry proclaimed King Charles the Second straightway. 
His proclamation, however, was of little use to him : for 
very few royalists appeared ; and, on the very same day, 
two people were publicly beheaded on Tower Hill for espous- 
ing his cause. Up came Oliver to Worcester too, at double- 
quick speed ; and he and his Ironsides so laid about them in 
the great battle which was fought there, that they com- 
pletely beat the Scottish men, and destroyed the royalist 
army, though the Scottish men fought so gallantly that it 
took five hours to do. 

The escape of Charles after this battle of Worcester did 
hini good service long afterwards ; for it induced many of 
the generous English people to take a romantic interest in 
him, and to think much better of him than he ever 
deserved. He fled in the night, with not more than sixty 
followers, to the house of a Catholic lady in Staffordshire. 
There, for his greater safety, the whole sixty left him. He 
cropped his hair, stained his face and hands brown as if 
they were sunburnt, put on the clothes of a laboring coun- 
tryman, and went out in the morning with his axe in his 
hand, accompanied by four wood-cutters who were brothers, 



360 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

and another man who was their brother-in-law. These 
good fellows made a bed for him under a tree, as the 
weather was very bad ; and the wife of one of them brought 
him food to eat ; and the old mother of the four brother? 
came and fell down on her knees before him in the wood, ■ 
and thanked God that her sons were engaged in saving his 
life. At night, he came out of the forest, and went on to 
another house which was near the River Severn, with the 
intention of passing into Wales; but the place swarmed 
with soldiers, and the bridges were guarded, and all the 
boats were made fast. So, after lying in a hayloft covered 
over with hay for some time, he came out of his place, 
attended by Col. Careless, a Catholic gentleman who 
had met him there, and with whom he lay hid, all next 
day, up in the shady branches of a fine old oak. It was 
lucky for the king that it was September time, and that 
the leaves had not begun to fall, since he and the colonel, 
perched up in this tree, could catch glimpses of the soldiers 
riding about below, and could hear the crash in the "wood as 
they went about beating the boughs. 

After this, he walked and walked until his feet were all 
blistered; and having been concealed all one day in a 
house, which was searched by the troopers while he was 
there, went with Lord Wilmot, another of. his good 
friends, to a place called Bentley, where one Miss Lane, a 
Protestant lady, had obtained a pass to be allowed to ride 
through the guards to see a relation of hers near Bristol. 
Disguised as a servant, he rode in the saddle before this 
young lady to the house of Sir John Winter, while 
Lord Wilmot rode there boldly, like a plain country gentle- 
man, with dogs at his heels. It happened that Sir John 
Winter's butler had been servant in^ Richmond Palace, and 
knew Charles the moment he set eyes upon him ; but the 
butler was faithful, and kept the secret. As no ship could 
be found to carry him abroad, it was planned that he should 
g — still travelling with Miss Lane as her servant — to 
another house, at Trent near Sherborne in Dorsetshire; 
and then Miss Lane and her cousin, Mr. Lascelles, who 
had gone on horseback beside her all the way, went home. 
I hope Miss Lane was going to marry that cousin ; for I am 
sure she must have been a brave, kind girl. If I had been 
that cousin, I should certainly have loved Miss Lane. 
When Charles, lonely for the loss of Miss Lane, was safe 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 361 

at Trent, a ship was hired at Lyme, the master of which 
engaged to take two gentlemen to France. In the evening 
of the same day, the king — now riding as servant before 
another young lady — set off for a public-house at a place 
called Charmouth, where the captain of the vessel was to 
take him on board. But the captain's wife, being -afraid of 
her husband getting into trouble, locked him up, and would 
not let him sail. Then they went away to Bridport, and, 
coining to the inn there, found the stable-yard full of sol- 
diers who were on the lookout for Charles, and who talked 
about him while they drank. He had such presence of 
mind, that he led the horses of his party through the yard 
as any other servant might have done, and said, " Come, out 
of the way, you soldiers ; let us have room to pass here ! " 
As he went along, he met a half-tipsy ostler, who rubbed 
his eyes, and said to him, " Why, I was formerly servant to 
Mr. Potter at Exeter, and surely I have sometimes seen 
you thereby oung man?" He certainly had; for Charles 
had lodged there. His ready answer was, " Ah ! I did live 
with him once; but I have no time to talk now. We'll 
have a pot of beer together when I come back." 

From this dangerous place he returned to Trent, and lay 
there concealed several days. Then he escaped to Heale, 
near Salisbury ; where, in the house of a widow lady, he 
was hidden five days, until the master of a. collier lying off 
Shoreham in Sussex, undertook to convey a " gentleman " 
to France. On the night of the 15th of October, accompa- 
nied by two colonels and a merchant, the king rode to 
Brighton, then a little fishing-village, to give the captain 
of the ship a supper before going on board ; but so many 
people knew him, that this captain knew him too, and not 
only he, but the landlord and landlady also. Before he 
went away, the landlord came behind his chair, kissed his 
hand, and said he hoped to live to be a lord and to see his 
wife a lady ; at which Charles laughed. Thej'- had had a 
good supper by 'this time, and plenty of smoking and 
drinking, at which the king was a first-rate hand; so the 
captain assured him that he would stand by him, and 
he did. It was agreed that the captain should pretend to 
sail to Deal, and that Charles should address the sailors, and 
say he was a gentleman in debt, who was running away 
from his creditors, and that he hoped they would join him 
in persuading the captain to put him ashore in France. 

31 



362 A, CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

As the king acted his part very well indeed, and gave the 
sailors twenty shillings. to drink, they begged the captain 
to do what such a worthy gentlemen asked. He pre- 
tended to yield to their entreaties, and the king got safe to 
Normandy. 

Ireland being now subdued, and Scotland kept quiet by 
plenty of forts and soldiers put there by Oliver, the Parlia- 
ment would have gone on quietly enough, as far as fighting 
with any foreign enemy went, but for getting into trouble 
with the Dutch, who, in the spring of the year 1651, sent a 
fleet into the Downs under their Admiral Van Tromp, 
to call upon the bold English Admiral Blake (who was 
there with half as many ships as the Dutch) to strike his 
flag. Blake fired a raging broadside instead, and beat off 
Van Tromp ; who, in the autumn, came back again ~"'th 
seventy ships, and challenged the bold Blake — who "still 
was only half as strong — to fight him. Blake fought him 
all day; but finding that the Dutch were too many $*; him, 
got quietly off at night. What does Van Tromp up this, 
but goes cruising and boasting about the Channel, between 
the North Foreland and the Isle of Wight, with a great 
Dutch broom tied to his masthead, as a sign that he could 
and would sweep the English off the sea ? Within three 
months, Blake lowered his tone though, and his brooin too; 
for he and two other bold commanders, Dean and Monk, 
fought him three whole days, took twenty-three of his 
ships, shivered his broom to pieces, and settled his business. 

Things were no sooner quiet again, than the army began 
to complain to the Parliament that they were not govern- 
ing the nation properly, and to hint that they thought they 
could do it better themselves. Oliver, who had now made 
up his mind to be the head of the state, or nothing at all, 
supported them in this, and called a mee ing of officers and 
his own parliamentary friends, at his lodgings in Whitehall, 
to consider the best way of getting rid of the Parliament. 
It had now lasted just as many years as the king's un- 
bridled power had lasted, before it came into existence. 
The end of the deliberation was, that Oliver went down to 
the House in his usual plain black dress, with his usual gray 
worsted stockings, but with an unusual party of soldiers 
behind him. These last he left in the lobby, ancl then went in 
and sat down. Presently he got up, made 'the Parliament 
a speech, told them that the Lord had done with them, 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 363 

stamped his foot, and said, " You are no parliament. Bring 
them in; bring them in!" At this signal the door flew 
open, and the soldiers appeared. "This is not honest," 
said Sir Harry Vane, one of the members. " Sir Harry- 
Vane!" cried Cromwell; "0 Sir Harry Vane! the Lord 
deliver me from Sir Harry Vane ! " Then he pointed out 
members one by one, and said this man was a drunkard, and 
that man a dissipated fellow, and that man a liar, and so 
on. Then he caused the speaker to be walked out of his 
chair, told the guard to clear the House, called the mace 
upon the table — which is a sign that the House is sit- 
ting — "a fool's bauble, " and said, " Here, carry it away ! " 
Being obeyed in all these orders, he quietly locked the door, 
put the key in his pocket, walked back to Whitehall again, 
anrl told his friends, who were still assembled there, what 
he. \& done. 

Tl °y formed a new Council of State after this extraor- 
(linar proceeding, and got a new parliament together in 
their r n way : which Oliver himself opened in a sort of 
sermoxx, and which he said was the beginning of a perfect 
heaven upon earth. In this parliament there sat a well- 
known leather-seller, who had taken the singular name of 
Praise God Barebones, and from whom it was called, for a 
joke, Barebone's Parliament, though its general name was 
the Little Parliament. As it soon appeared that it was 
not going to put Oliver in the first place, it turned out to be 
not at all like the beginning of heaven upon earth, and 
Oliver said it really was not to be borne with. So he cleared 
off that parliament in much the same way as he had dis- 
posed of the other ; and then the council of officers decided 
that he must be made the supreme authority of the king- 
dom, under the title of the Lord Protector of the Common- 
wealth. 

So, on the 16th of December, 1653, a great procession 
was formed at Oliver's door ; and he came out in a black 
velvet suit and a big pair of boots, and got into his coach, 
and went down to Westminster, attended by the judges, 
and the lord mayor, and the aldermen, and all the other 
great and wonderful personages of the country. There, in 
.the Court of Chancery, he publicly accepted the office of 
Lord Protector. Then he was sworn, and the city sword 
was handed to him, and the seal was handed to him, and 
all the other things were handed to which are usually 



364 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

handed to kings and queens on state occasions. When 
Oliver had handed them all back, he was quite made, and 
completely finished off as Lord Protector ; and several of 
the Ironsides preached about it at great length, all the 
evening. 

Second Part. 

Oliver Cromwell, — whom the people long called Old 
Noll, — in accepting the office of Protector, had bound 
himself by a certain paper which was handed to him, called 
" The Instrument," to summon a parliament, consisting of 
between four and five hundred members, in the election 
of which neither the Royalists nor the Catholics were to 
have any share. He had also pledged himself that this 
parliament should not be dissolved without its own con- 
sent until it had sat five months. 

When this parliament met, Oliver made a speech to 
them of three hours long, very wisely advising them what 
to do for the credit and happiness of the country. To 
keep down the more violent members, he required them 
to sign a recognition of what they w«ere forbidden by 
"The Instrument" to do; which was chiefly to take the 
power from one single person at the head of the state, 
or to command the army. Then he dismissed them to 
go to work. With his usual vigor and resolution he 
went to work himself with some frantic preachers, who 
were rather overdoing their sermons in calling him a 
villain and a tyrant, by shutting up their chapels, and 
sending a few of them off to prison. 

There was not at that time in England, or anywhere 
else, a man so able to govern the country as Oliver Crom- 
well. Although he ruled with a strong hand, and levied 
a very heavy tax on the Royalists (but not until they 
had plotted against his life), he ruled wisely, and as the 
times required. He caused England to be so respected 
abroad, that I wish some lords and gentlemen, who have 
governed it under kings and queens in later days, would 
have taken ' a leaf out of Oliver Cromwell's book. He 
sent bold Admiral Blake to the Mediterranean Sea, to 
make the Duke of Tuscany pay sixty thousand pounds 
for injuries he had done to British subjects, and spolia- 
tion he had committed on English merchants. He fur- 
ther despatched him and his fleet to Algiers, Tunis, and 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 365 

Tripoli, to have every English ship and every English- 
man delivered up to him that had been taken by pi- 
rates in those parts. All this was gloriously done ; and 
it began to be thoroughly well known, all over the world, 
that England was governed by a man in earnest, who 
would not allow the English name to be insulted or 
slighted anywhere. 

These were not all his foreign triumphs. He sent a 
fleet to sea against the Dutch ; and the two powers, 
each with one hundred ships upon its side, met in the 
English Channel off the North Foreland, where the fight 
lasted all day long. Dean was killed in this fight ; but 
Monk, who commanded in the same ship with him, threw 
his cloak over his body, that the sailors might not know 
of his death, and be disheartened. Nor were they. The 
English broadsides so exceedingly astonished the Dutch, 
that they sheered off at last, though the redoubtable Van 
Tromp fired upon them with his own guns for deserting 
their flag. Soon afterwards the two fleets engaged again, 
off the coast of Holland. There the valiant Van Tromp 
was shot through the heart, and the Dutch gave in, and 
peace was made. 

Further than this, Oliver resolved not to bear the domi- 
neering and bigoted conduct of Spain, which country 
not only claimed a right to all the* gold and silver that 
could be found in South America, and treated the ships 
of all other countries who visited those regions as pirates, 
but put English subjects into the horrible Spanish prisons 
of the Inquisition. So Oliver told the Spanish ambassa- 
dor that English ships must be free to go wherever they 
would, and that English merchants must not be thrown 
into those same dungeons ; no, not for the pleasure of all 
the priests in Spain. To this the Spanish ambassador 
replied, that the gold and silver country, and the Holy 
Inquisition, were his king's two eyes, neither of which he 
could submit to have put out. Very well, said Oliver, 
then he was afraid he (Oliver) must damage those two 
eyes directly. 

So another fleet was despatched under two command- 
ers, Pexn and Vexables, for Hispaniola ; where, however, 
the Spaniards got the better of the fight. Consequently, 
the fleet came home again, after taking Jamaica on the 
way. Oliver, indignant with the two commanders who had 

31* 



366 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

not done what bold Admiral Blake would have done, 
clapped them both into prison, declared war against Spain, 
and made a treaty with France, in virtue of which it was 
to shelter the king and his brother, the Duke of York, no 
longer. Then he sent a fleet abroad under bold Admiral 
Blake, which brought the King of Portugal to his senses, 
— just to keep its hand in, — and then engaged a Span- 
ish fleet, sunk four great ships, and took two more, laden 
with silver to the value of two millions of pounds: which 
dazzling prize was brought from Portsmouth to London 
in wagons, with the populace of all the towns and vil- 
lages through which the wagons passed, shouting with 
all their might. After this victory, bold Admiral Blake 
sailed away to the port of Santa Cruz to cut off the Span- 
ish treasure-ships coming from Mexico. There he found 
them, ten in number, with seven others to take care of 
them, and a big castle, and seven batteries, all roaring 
and blazing away at him with great guns. Blake cared 
no more for great guns than for pop-guns, — no more for 
their hot iron balls than for snow-balls. He dashed into 
the harbor, captured and burnt every one of the ships, and 
came sailing out again triumphantly, with the victorious 
English flag flying at his mast-head. This was the last tri- 
umph of this great commander, who had sailed and fought 
until he was quite worn out. He died as his successful ship 
was coming into Plymouth Harbor amidst the joyful accla- 
mations of the people, and was buried in state in West- 
minister Abbey, — not to lie there long. 

Over and above all this, Oliver found that the Vau- 
dois, or Protestant people of the valleys of Lucerne, 
were insolently treated by the Catholic powers, and were 
even put to death for their religion, in an audacious and 
bloody manner. Instantly he informed those powers that 
this was a thing which Protestant England would not 
allow ; and he speedily carried his point, through the 
might of his great name, and established their right to 
worship God in peace after their own harmless manner. 

Lastly, his English army won such admiration in fight- 
ing with the French against the Spaniards, that, after 
they had assaulted the town of Dunkirk together, the 
French king in person gave ' it up to the English, that 
it might be a token to them of their might and valor. 

There were plots enough against Oliver among the fran- 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 367 

tic religionists (who called themselves Fifth Monarchy- 
Men), and among the disappointed republicans. He had 
a difficult game to play; for the Royalists were always ready 
to side with either party against him. The " King over the 
water/' too, as Charles was called, had no scruples about 
plotting with any one against his lrfe; although there is 
reason to suppose that he would willingly have married one 
of his daughters, if Oliver would have had such a son- 
in-law. There was a certain Col. Saxby of the army, 
once a great supporter of Oliver's, but now turned against 
him, who was a grievous trouble to him through all this 
part of his career ; and who came and went between the 
discontented in England and Spain, and Charles, who put 
himself in alliance with Spain on being thrown off by- 
France. This man died in prison at last; but not until 
there had been very serious plots between the Royalists and 
Republicans, and an actual rising of them in England, when 
they burst into the city of Salisbury on a Sunday night, 
seized the judges who were going to hold the assizes there 
next day, and would have hanged them but for the merciful 
objections of the more temperate of their number. Oliver 
was so vigorous and shrewd that he soon put this revolt 
down, as he did most other conspiracies ; and it was well 
for one of its chief managers — that same Lord Wilmot 
who had assisted in Charles's night, and was now Earl of 
Rochester — that he made his escape. Oliver seemed 
to have eyes and ears everywhere, and secured such sources 
of information- as his enemies little dreamed of. There 
was a chosen body of six persons, called the Sealed Knot, 
who were in the closest and most secret confidence of 
Charles. One of the foremost of these very men, a Sir 
Richard Willis, reported to Oliver every thing that 
passed among them, and had two hundred a year for it. 

Miles Syndarcomb, also of the old army, was another 
conspirator against the Protector. He and a man named 
Cecil, bribed one of his life-guards to let them have good 
notice when he was going out, — intending to shoot him 
from a window. But owing either to his caution or his 
good fortune, they could never get an aim at him. Disap- 
pointed in this design, they got into the chapel in White- 
hall, with a basketful of combustibles, which were to ex- 
plode, by means of a slow match, in six hours ; then, in the 
noise and confusion of the fire, they hdped to kill Oliver. 



368 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

But the life-guardsman himself disclosed this plot; and 
they were seized, and Miles died (or killed himself in 
prison) a little while before he was ordered for execution. 
A few such plotters Oliver caused to be beheaded, a few 
more to be hanged, and many more, including those who 
rose in arms against *him, to be sent as slaves to the West 
Indies. If he were rigid, he was impartial, too, in asserting 
the laws of England. When a Portuguese nobleman, the 
brother of the Portuguese ambassador, killed a London 
citizen in mistake for another man with whom he had had 
a quarrel, Oliver caused him to be tried before a jury of 
Englishmen and foreigners, and had him executed in spite 
of the entreaties of all the ambassadors in London. 

One of Oliver's own friends, the Duke of Oldenburgh, 
in sending him a present. of six fine coach-horses, was very 
near doing more to please the Royalists than all the plotters 
put together. One day, Oliver went with his coach, drawn 
by these six horses, into Hyde Park, to dine with his sec- 
retary and some of his other gentlemen under the trees 
there. After dinner, being merry, he took it into his head 
to put his friends inside and to drive them home ; a postilion 
riding one of the foremost horses, as the custom was. On 
account of Oliver's being too free with the whip, the six 
fine horses went off at a gallop, the postilion got thrown, 
and Oliver fell upon the coach-pole, and narrowly escaped 
being shot by his own pistol, which got entangled with his 
clothes in the harness, and went off. He was dragged 
some distance by the ■ foot, until his foot c*ame out of the 
shoe, and then he came safely to the ground under the 
broad body of the coach, and was very little the worse. 
The gentlemen inside were only bruised, and the discon- 
tented people of all* parties were much disappointed. 

The rest of the history of the Protectorate of Oliver 
Cromwell is a history of his parliaments. His first one 
not pleasing him at all, he waited until the five months 
were out, and then dissolved it. The next was better 
suited to his views ; and from that he desired to get — if he 
could with safety to himself — -the title of king. He had 
had this in his mind some time: whether because he 
thought that the English people, being more used to the 
title, were more likely to obey it, or whether because he 
really wished to be a king himself, and to leave the succes- 
sion to that title in his family, is far from clear. He was 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 369 

already as high, in England and in all the world, as he 
would ever be ; and I doubt if he cared for the mere name. 
However, a paper, called the "Humble Petition and Ad- 
vice," was presented to him by the House of Commons, 
praying him to take a high title and to appoint his succes- 
sor. That he would have taken the title of king there is 
no doubt, but for the strong opposition of the army. . This 
induced him to forbear, and to assent only to the other 
points' of the petition. Upon which occasion there was 
another grand show in Westminister Hall, when the 
Speaker of the House of Commons formally invested him 
with a purple robe lined with ermine, and presented him 
with a splendidly-bound Bible, and put a golden sceptre in 
his hand. The next time the Parliament met, he called a 
House of Lords of sixty members, as the petition gave him 
power to do ; but as that parliament did not please him 
either, and would not proceed to the business of the coun- 
try, he jumped into a coach one morning, took six guards 
with him, and sent them to the right-about. I wish this 
had been a warning to parliaments to avoid long speeches, 
and do more work. 

It was the month of August, 1658, when Oliver Crom- 
well's favorite daughter, Elizabeth Claypole (who had 
lately lost her youngest son), lay very ill, and his mind was 
greatly troubled, because he loved her dearly. Another of 
his daughters was married to Lord Ealconberg, another 
to the grandson of the Earl of Warwick, and he had made 
his son Richard one of the members of the Upper House. 
He was very kind and loving to them all, being a good 
father and a good husband ; but he loved this daughter the 
best of the family, and went down to Hampton Court to 
see her, and could hardly be induced to stir from her sick 
room until she died. Although his religion had been of a 
gloomy kind, his disposition had been always cheerful. He 
had been fond of music in his home, and had kept open 
table once a week fo¥ all officers of the army not below the 
rank of captain, and had always preserved in his house a 
quiet, sensible dignity. He encouraged men of genius and 
learning, and loved to have them about him. Milton was 
one of his great friends. He was good-humored too, with 
the nobility, whose dresses and manners were very different 
from his ; and to show them what good information he had, 
he would sometimes jokingly tell them, when they were his 



370 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

guests, where they had last drunk the health of the "King 
over the water/' and would recommend them to be more 
private (if they could) another time. But he had lived in 
busy times, had borne the weight of heavy state-affairs, and 
had often gone in fear of his life. He was ill of the gout 
and ague ; and when the death of his beloved child came 
upon him in addition, he sank, never to raise his head 
again. He told his physicians, on the 24th of August, that 
the Lord had assured him that he was not to die in that ill- 
ness, and that he would certainly get better. This was 
only his sick fancy; for on the 3d of September, which 
was the anniversary of the great battle of Worcester, and 
the day of the year which he called his fortunate day, he 
died, in the sixtieth year of his age. He had been deli- 
rious, and had lain insensible some hours, but he had been 
overheard to murmur a very good prayer the day before. 
The whole country lamented his death. If you want to 
know the real worth of Oliver Cromwell, and his real 
services to his country, you can hardly do better than com- 
pare England under him with England under Charles 
the Second. 

He had appointed his son Richard to succeed him ; and 
after there had been, at Somerset House in the Strand, a 
lying-in-state more splendid than sensible, — as all such 
vanities after death are, I think, — Richard became Lord 
Protector. He was an amiable country gentleman, but had 
none of his father's great genius, and was quite unfit for 
such a post in such a storm of parties. Richard's Protec- 
torate, which only lasted a year and a half, is a history of 
quarrels between the officers of the army and the Parlia- 
ment, and between the officers among themselves ; and of 
a growing discontent among the people, who had far too 
many long sermons, and far too few amusements, and 
wanted a change. At last, Gen. Monk got the army well 
into his own hands, and then, in pursuance of a secret 
plan he seems to have entertained from the time of Oliver's 
death, declared for the king's cause. He did not do this 
openly ; but in his place in the House of Commons, as one 
of the members for Devonshire, strongly advocated the pro- 
posals of one Sir John Greenville, who came to the 
House with a letter from Charles, dated from Breda, and 
with whom he had previously been in secret communication. 
There had been plots and counterplots, and a recall of the 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 371 

last members of the Long Parliament, and an end of the 

Long Parliament, and risings of the Royalists that were 
.made too soon j and most men being tired out, and there 
being no one to head the country now Great Oliver was 
dead, it was readily agreed to welcome Charles Stuart. 
Some of the wiser and better members said, — what was 
most true, — that in the letter from Breda, he gave no real 
promise to govern well, and that it would be best to make 
him pledge himself beforehand as to what he should be 
bound to do for the benefit of the kingdom. Monk said, 
however, it would be all right when he came, and he could 
not come too soon. 

So everybody found out all in a moment that the country 
must be prosperous and happy, having another Stuart to 
condescend to reign over it ; and there was a prodigious 
firing off of guns, lighting of bonfires, ringing of bells, and 
throwing up of caps. The people drank the king's health 
by thousands in the open streets, and everybody rejoiced. 
Down came the arms of the Commonwealth, up went the 
royal arms instead, and out came the public money. 
Pifty thousand pounds for the king, ten thousand pounds for 
his brother the Duke of York, five thousand pounds for his 
brother the Duke of Gloucester. Prayers for these gracious 
Stuarts were put up in all the churches; commissioners 
were sent to Holland (which suddenly found out that Charles 
was a great man, and that it loved him) to invite the king 
home ; Monk and the Kentish grandees went to Dover to 
kneel down before him as he landed. He kissed and em- 
braced Monk, made him ride in the coach with himself and 
his brothers, came on to London amid wonderful shoutings, 
and passed through the army at Blackheath on the 29th of 
May (his birthday), 1660. Greeted by splendid dinners 
under tents, by flags and tapestry streaming from all the 
houses, by delighted crowds in all the streets, by troops of 
noblemen and gentlemen in rich dresses, by city companies, 
train-bands, drummers, trumpeters, the great lord mayor, 
and the majestic aldermen, the king went on to Whitehall. 
On entering it, he commemorated his restoration with the 
joke that it really would seem to have been his own fault 
that he had not come long ago, since everybpdy told him 
that he had always wished for him with all his heart. 



372 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XXXV; 

ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, CALLED THE MERRY 
MONARCH. 

There never were such profligate times in England as 
under Charles the Second. Whenever you see his por- 
trait, with his swarthy, ill-looking face and great nose, you 
may fancy him in his Court at Whitehall, surrounded by 
some of the very worst vagabonds in the kingdom (though 
they were lords and ladies), drinking, gambling, indulging 
in vicious conversation, and committing every kind of 
profligate excess. It has been a fashion to call Charles 
the Second " The Merry Monarch." Let me try to give 
you a general idea of some of the merry things that' were 
done, in the merry days when this merry gentleman sat 
upon his merry throne, in merry England. 

The first merry proceeding was — of course — to declare 
that he was one of the greatest, the wisest, and the noblest 
kings that ever shone, like the blessed sun itself, on this 
benighted earth. The next merry and pleasant piece of 
business was, for the Parliament, in the humblest man- 
ner, to give him one million two hundred thousand pounds 
a year, and to settle upon him for life that old dis- 
puted tonnage and poundage which had been so bravely 
fought for. Then Gen. Monk, being made Earl of Albe- 
marle, and a few other Royalists similarly rewarded, the 
law went to work to see what was to be done to those 
persons (they were called Regicides) who had been con- 
cerned in making a martyr of the late king. Ten of 
these were merrily executed ; that is to say, six of the 
judges, one of the council, Col. Hacker and^another offi- 
cer who had commanded the Guards, and Hugh Peters, 
a preacher who had preached against the martyr with all 
his heart. These executions were so extremely merry, 
that every horrible circumstance which Cromwell had 
abandoned was revived with appalling cruelty. The hearts 



CHARLES THE SECOND. 373 

of the sufferers were torn out of their living bodies ; their 
bowels were burned before their faces; the executioner 
cut jokes to the next victim, as he rubbed his filthy hands 
together, that were reeking with the blood of the last ; 
and the heads of the dead were drawn on sledges with 
the living to the place of suffering. Still, even so merry 
a monarch could not force one of these dying men to say 
that he was sorry for what he had done. Nay, the most 
memorable thing said among them was, that if the thing 
were to do again they would do it. 

Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished the evidence against 
Strafford, and was one of the most stanch of the Repub- 
licans, was also tried, found guilty, and ordered for execu- 
tion. When he came upon the scaffold on Tower Hill, 
after conducting his own defence with great power, his 
notes of what he had meant to say to the people were 
torn away from him, and the drums and trumpets were 
orderecL to sound lustily and drown his voice; for the 
people had been so much impressed by what the Regi- 
cides had calmly said with their last breathy that it was 
the custom now to have the drums and trumpets always 
under the scaffold, ready to strike up. Vane said no more 
than this : " It is a bad cause which cannot bear the 
words of a dying man ; " and bravely died. 

These merry scenes were succeeded by another, perhaps 
even merrier. On the anniversary of the late king's death, 
the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were 
torn out of their graves in Westminster Abbey, dragged 
to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows all day long, and 
then beheaded. Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwell 
set upon a pole to be stared at by a brutal crowd, not 
one of whom would have dared to look the living Oliver 
in the face for half a moment ! Think, after you have 
read this reign, what England was under Oliver Cromwell, 
who was torn out of his grave, and what it was under 
this merry monarch who sold it, like a merry Judas, over 
and over agamT" ' 

Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife and daughter 
were not to be spared either, though they had been most 
excellent women. The base clergy of that time gave up 
their bodies, which had been buried in the abbey ; and 
— to the eternal disgrace of England — they were thrown 



374 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

into a pit, together with the mouldering bones of Pym, 
and of thejbrave and bold old Admiral Blake. 

The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they 
hoped to get the nonconformists, or dissenters, thoroughly 
put down in this reign, and to have but one prayer- 
book and one service for all kinds of people, no matter 
what their private opinions were. This was pretty well 
I think, for a Protestant Church, which had displaced the 
Eomish Church because people had a right to their own 
opinions in religious matters. However, they carried it 
with a high hand, and a prayer-book was agreed upon, in 
which the extremest opinions of Archbishop Laud were 
not forgotten. An act was passed, too, preventing any dis- 
senter from holding any office under any corporation. So 
the regular clergy, in their triumph, were soon as merry as 
the king. The army being by this time disbanded, and the 
king crowned, every thing was to go on easily forevermore. 

I must say a word here about the king's famijy. He 
had not been long upon the throne, when his brother the 
Duke of Gloucester, and his sister the Princess of 
Orange, died, within a few months of each other, of small- 
pox. His remaining- sister, the Princess Henrietta, 
married the Duke of Orleans, the brother of Louis 
the Fourteenth, King of France. His brother James, 
Duke of York, was made high admiral, and by and by 
became a Catholic. He was a gloomy, sullen, bilious sort 
of man, with a remarkable partiality for the ugliest women 
in the country. He married, under very discreditable 
circumstance's, Anne Hyde, the daughter of Lord Clar- 
endon, then the king's principal minister, — not at all a 
delicate minister either, but doing much of the dirty work 
of a very dirty palace. It became important now that 
the king himself should be married; and divers foreign 
monarchs, not very particular about the character of their 
son-in-law, proposed their daughters to him. The King 
of Portugal offered his daughter, Catherine of Bra- 
ganza, and fifty thousand pounds ; in addition to which, 
the French king, who was favorable to that match, offered 
a loan of another fifty thousand. The King of Spain, on 
the other hand, offered any one out of a dozen of prin- 
cesses, and other hopes of gain. But the ready money 
carried the day, and Catherine came over in state to her 
merry marriage. , 



CHARLES THE SECOND. 375 

The whole court was a great flaunting crowd of de- 
bauched men and shameless women; and Catherine's 
merry husband insulted and outraged her in every possible 
way, until she consented to receive those worthless creatures. 
as her very good friends, and to degrade herself by their 
companionship. A Mrs. Palmer, whom the king made 
Lady Castlemaine, and afterwards Duchess of Cleve- 
land, was one of the most powerful of the bad women 
about the court, and had great influence with the king 
nearly all through his reign. Another merry lady, named 
Moll Da vies, a dancer at the theatre, was afterwards her 
rival. So was Nell Gwyn, first an orange-girl and then 
an actress, who really had good in her, and- of whom one of 
the worst things I know is, that actually she does seem 
to have been fond of the king. The first Duke of St. 
Albans was this orange-girl's child. In like manner the 
son of a merry waiting-lady, whom the king created 
Duchess of Portsmouth, became the Duke of Rich- 
mond. Upon the whole, it is not so bad a thing to be a 
commoner. 

The Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry among 
these merry ladies, and some equally merry (and equally 
infamous) lords and gentlemen, that he soon got through 
his hundred thousand pounds, and then, by way of raising 
a little pocket-money, made a merry bargain. He sold 
Dunkirk to the French king for five millions of livres. 
When I think of the dignity to which Oliver Cromwell 
raised England in the eyes of ibreign powers, and when I 
think of the manner in which he gained for England this 
very Dunkirk, I* am much inclined to consider that if the 
Merry Monarch had been made to follow his father for this 
action, he would have received his just deserts. 

Though he was like his father in none of that father's 
greater qualities, he' was like him in being worthy of no 
trust. When he sent that letter to the Parliament, from 
Breda, he did expressly promise that all sincere religious 
opinions should be respected. Yet he was no sooner firm 
in his power than he consented to one of the worst acts of 
parliament ever passed. Under this law, every minister 
who should not gfive his solemn assent to the prayer-book 
by a certain day, was declared to be a minister no longer, 
and to be deprived of his church. The consequence of this 
was, that some two thousand honest men were taken from 



376 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

their congregations, and reduced to dire poverty and dis- 
tress. It was followed by another outrageous law, called 
the Conventicle Act, by which any person above the age of 
sixteen, who was present at any religious service not accord- 
ing to the prayer-book, was to be imprisoned three months 
for the first offence, six for the second, and to i>e trans- 
ported for the third. This act alone filled the prisons, 
which were then most dreadful dungeons, to overflowing. 

The Covenanters in Scotland had already fared no better. 
A base parliament, usually known as the drunken parlia- 
ment, in consequence of its principal members being seldom 
sober, had been got together to make laws against the 
Covenanters, and force all men to be of one mind in religi- 
ous matters. The Marquis of Argyle, relying on the 
king's honor, had given himself up to him ; but he was 
wealthy, and his enemies wanted his wealth. He was 
tried for treason, on the evidence of some private letters in 
which he had expressed opinions — as well he might — more 
favorable to the government of the late Lord Protector 
than of the present merry and religious king. He was 
executed, as were two men of mark among the Covenanters ; 
and Sharp, a traitor who had once been the friend of the 
Presbyterians and betrayed them, was made Archbishop 
of St. Andrew's, to teach the Scotch how to like bishops. 

Things being in this merry state at home, the merry 
monarch undertook a war with the Dutch ; principally be- 
cause they interfered with an African company, established 
with the two objects of buying ' gold-dust and slaves, of 
which the Duke of York was a leading member. After 
some preliminary hostilities, the said duke sailed to the 
coast of Holland with a fleet of ninety-eight vessels of war, 
and four fire-ships. This engaged with the Dutch fleet, of 
no fewer than one hundred and thirteen ships. In the 
great battle between the two forces, the Dutch lost eighteen 
ships, four admirals, and seven thousand men. But the 
English on shore were in no mood of exultation when they 
heard the hews. 

For this was the year and the time of the Great Plague 
in London. During the winter of 1664 it had been whis- 
pered about, that some few people had died here and there 
of the disease called the Plague, in some of the unwhole- 
some suburbs around London. News was not published at 
that time as it is now, and some people believed these 



CHAELES THE SECOND. 377 

rumors, and some disbelieved them, and they were soon 
forgotten. But in the month of May, 1665, it began to be 
said all over the town that the disease had burst out with 
great violence in St. Giles's, and that the people were dying 
in great numbers. This soon turned out to be awfully 
true. The roads out of London were choked up by people 
endeavoring to escape from the infected city, and large 
sums were paid for any kind of conveyance. The disease 
soon spread so fast, that it was necessary to shut up the 
houses in which sick people were, and to cut them off from 
communication with the living. Every one of these houses 
was marked on the outside of the door with a red cross, and 
the words, " Lord, have mercy upon us ! " The streets were all 
de.serted, grass grew in the public ways, and there was a 
dreadful silence in the air. When night came on, dismal 
rumblings used to be heard ; and these were the wheels of 
the death-carts, attended by men with veiled faces and 
holding cloths to their mouths, who rang doleful bells, and 
cried in a loud and solemn voice, " Bring out your dead ! " 
The corpses put into these carts were buried by torchlight 
in great pits ; no service being performed over them ; all 
men being afraid to stay for a moment on the brink of the 
ghastly graves. In the general fear, children ran away 
from their parents, and parents from their children. Some 
who were taken ill, died alone, and without any help. 
Some were stabbed or strangled by hired nurses, who robbed 
them of all their money, and stole the very beds on which 
they lay. Some went mad, dropped from the windows, ran 
through the streets, and in their pain and frenzy flung 
themselves into the river. . 

These were not all the horrors of the time. The wicked 
and dissolute, in wild desperation, sat in the taverns singing 
roaring songs, and were stricken as they drank, and went 
out and died. The fearful and superstitious* persuaded 
themselves that they saw supernatural sights, — burning 
swords in the sky, gigantic arms, and darts. Others pre- 
tended that at nights vast crowds of ghosts walked round 
and round the dismal pits. One madman, naked, and car- 
rying a brazier full of burning coals upon his head, stalked 
through the streets, crying out that he was a prophet, com- 
missioned to denounce the vengeance of the Lord on wicked 
London. Another always went to and fro, exclaiming, 
" Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed ! " A third 

32* 



378 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

awoke the echoes in the dismal streets by night and by 
day, and made the blood of the sick run cold, by calling 
out incessantly, in a deep, hoarse voice, " Oh, the great and 
dreadful God!" * 

Through the months of July and August and September, 
the Great Plague raged more and more. Great fires were 
lighted in the streets, in the hope of stopping the infection ; 
but there was a plague of rain, too, and it beat the fires out. 
At last, the winds which usually arise at that time of the 
year which is called the equinox, when day and night are 
of equal length all over the world, began to blow, and to 
purify the wretched town. The deaths began to decrease, 
the red crosses slowly to disappear, the fugitives to return, 
the shops to open, pale frightened faces to be seen in the 
streets. The plague had been in every part of England ; 
but in close and unwholesome London it had killed one hun- 
dred thousand people. 

All this time, the Merry Monarch was as merry as ever, 
and as worthless as ever. All this time, the debauched 
lords and gentlemen and the shameless ladies danced and 
gained and drank, and loved and hated one another, accord- 
ing to their merry ways. So little humanity did the gov- 
ernment learn from the late affliction, that one of the first 
things the Parliament did when it met at Oxford (being as 
yet afraid to come to London) was to make a law called 
the Five-Mile Act, expressly directed against those poor 
ministers, who, in the time of the plague, had manfully 
come back to comfort the unhappy people. This infamous 
law, by forbidding them to teach in any school, or to come 
within five miles of any city, town, or village, doomed them 
to starvation and death. 

The fleet had been at sea and healthy. The King of 
Prance was now in alliance with the Dutch ; though his 
navy was chiefly employed in looking on while the English 
and Dutch fought. The Dutch gained one victory; and 
the English gained another and a greater : and Prince Ru- 
pert, one of the English admirals, was out in the Channel 
one windy night, looking for the French admiral, with the 
intention of giving him something more to do than he had 
had yet, when the gale increased to a storm, and blew him 
into Saint Helen's. That night was the '3d of September, 
1666 ; and that wind fanned the Great Fire of London. 

It broke out at a baker's shop near London Bridge, on 



CHARLES THE SECOND. 379 

the spot on which the monument now stands as a remem- 
brance of those raging flames. It spread and spread, and 
burned and burned, for three days. The nights were* light- 
er than the days : in the day-time, there was an immense 
cloud of smoke ; and in the night-time, there' was a great tower 
of fire mounting up into the sky, which lighted the whole 
country landscape for ten miles round. Showers of hot 
ashes rose into the air, and fell on distant places ; flying 
sparks carried the conflagration to great distances, and kin- 
dled it in twenty new spots at a time ; church-steeples fell 
down with tremendous crashes ; houses crumbled into cin- 
ders by the hundred and the thousand. The summer had 
been intensely hot and dry : the streets were very narrow, 
and the houses mostly built of wood and plaster. Nothing 
could stop the tremendous fire but the want of more houses 
to burn; nor did it stop until the whole way from the 
Tower to Temple Bar was a desert, composed of the ashes 
of thirteen thousand houses and eighty-nine churches. 

This was a terrible visitation at the time, and occasioned 
great loss and suffering to the two hundred thousand burnt- 
out people, who were obliged to lie in the fields under the 
open night sky, or in hastily-made huts of mud and straw, 
while the lanes and roads were rendered impassable by 
carts which had broken down as they tried to save their 
goods. But the fire was a great blessing to the city after- 
wards, for it arose from its ruins very much improved, — 
built more regularly, more widely, more cleanly and care- 
fully, and therefore much more healthily. It might be 
far more healthy than it is, but there are some people in it 
still, — even now at this time, nearly two hundred years 
later, — so selfish, so pig-headed, and so ignorant, that I 
doubt if even another great fire would warm them up to do 
their duty. 

The Catholics were accused of having wilfully set London 
in flames ; one poor Frenchman, who had been mad for 
years, even accused himself of having with his own hand 
fired the first house. There is no reasonable doubt, how- 
ever, that the fire was accidental. An inscription on the 
monument long attributed it to the Catholics; but it is 
removed now, and was always a malicious and stupid un- 
truth. 



380 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Second Part. 

That the Merry Monarch might be very merry indeed, 
in the merry times when his people were suffering under 
pestilence and fire, he drank and gambled and flung away 
among his favorites the money which the Parliament had 
voted for the war. The consequence of this was, that 
the stout-hearted English sailors were merrily starving of 
want, and dying in the streets ; while the Dutch, under 
their admirals, De Witt and De R-uyter, came into the 
River Thames, and up the River Medway as far as Upnor, 
burned the guard-ships, silenced the weak batteries, and 
did what they would to the English coast for six whole 
weeks. Most of the English ships that could have pre- 
vented them had neither powder nor shot on board; in this 
merry reign, public officers made themselves as merry as 
the king did with the public money ; and when it was in- 
trusted to them to spend in national defences or prepara- 
tions, they put it into their own pockets with the merriest 
grace in the world. 

Lord Clarendon had, by this time, run as long a course 
as is usually allotted to the unscrupulous ministers of bad 
kings. He was impeached by his political opponents, but 
unsuccessfully. The king then commanded him to with- 
draw from England and retire to France, which he did, 
after defending himself in writing. He was no great loss 
at home, and died abroad some seven years afterwards. 

There then came into power a ministry called the Cabal 
Ministry, because it was composed of Lord Clifford, the 
Earl of Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham (a great 
rascal, and the king's most powerful favorite), Lord 
Ashley, and the Duke of Lauderdale, c. a. b. a. l. 
As the French were making conquests in Flanders, the 
first Cabal proceeding was to make a treaty with the Dutch, 
for uniting with Spain to oppose the French. It was no 
sooner made than the Merry Monarch, who always wanted 
to get money without being accountable to a parliament 
for his expenditure, apologized to the King of France for 
having had any thing to do with it, and concluded a secret 
treaty with him, making himself his infamous pensioner to 
the amount of two millions of livres down, and three mil- 
lions more a year ; and engaging to desert that very Spain, 
to make war against those very Dutch, and to declare him- 



CHARLES THE SECOND. 381 

self a Catholic when a convenient time should arrive. This 
religious king had lately been crying to his Catholic brother 
on the subject of his strong desire to be a Catholic; and 
now he merrily concluded this treasonable conspiracy 
against the country he governed, by undertaking to become 
one as soon as he safely could. For all of which, though 
he had had ten merry heads instead of one, he richly 
deserved to lose them by the headsman's axe. 

As his one merry head might have been far from safe, if 
these things had been known, they were kept very quiet, 
and war was declared by France and England against the 
Dutch. But a very uncommon man, afterwards most im- 
portant to English history and to the religion and liberty 
of this land, arose among them, and for many long years 
defeated the whole projects of France. This was William 
of Nassau, Prince op Orange, son of the last Prince 
of Orange of the same name, who married the daughter of 
Charles the First of England. He was a young man at 
this time, only just of age ; but he was brave, cool, intrepid, 
and wise. His father had been so detested, that, upon his 
death, the Dutch had abolished the authority to which this 
son would have otherwise succeeded (Stadtholder it was 
called), and placed the chief power in the hands of John 
de Witt, who educated this young prince. Now the 
Prince became very popular, and John de Witt's brother 
Cornelius was sentenced to banishment on a false accu- 
sation of conspiring to kill him. John went to the prison 
where he was, to take him away to exile, in his coach ; and 
a great mob who collected on the occasion, then and there 
cruelly murdered both the brothers. This left the govern- 
ment in the hands of the prince, who was really the choice 
of the nation; and from this time he exercised it with 
the greatest vigor, against the whole power of France, 
under its famous generals, Conde and Turenne, and in 
support of the Protestant religion. It was full seven years 
before this war ended in a treaty of peace made at Nime- 
guen, and its details would occupy a very considerable 
space. It is enough to say that William of Orange estab- 
lished a famous character with the whole world ; and that 
the Merry Monarch, adding to and improving on his former 
baseness, bound himself to do every thing the King of 
France liked, and nothing the King of France did not like, 
for a pension of one hundred thousand pounds a year, 



382 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

which was afterwards doubled. Besides this, the King of 
France, by means of his corrupt ambassador — who wrote 
accounts of his proceedings in England, which are not al- 
ways to be believed, I think — bought our English members 
of parliament, as he wanted them. So, in point of fact, 
during a considerable portion of this merry reign, the King 
of France was the real king of this country. 

But there was a better time to come ; and it was to come 
(though his royal uncle little thought so) through that very 
William, Prince of Orange. He came over to England, 
saw Mary, the elder daughter of the Duke of York, and 
married her. We shall see Jby and by what came of that 
marriage, and why it is never to be forgotten. 

This daughter was a Protestant, but her mother died a 
Catholic. She and her sister Anne, also a Protestant, 
were the only survivors of eight children. Anne after- 
wards married George, Prince of Denmark, brother to 
the king of that country. 

Lest you should do the Merry Monarch the injustice of 
supposing that he was even good humored (except when he 
had every thing his own way), or that he was high spirited 
and honorable, I will mention here what was done to a 
member of the House of Commons, Sir John Coventry. 
He made a remark in a debate about taxing the theatres, 
which gave the king offence. The king agreed with his 
illegitimate son, who had been born abroad, and whom he 
had made Duke of Monmouth, to take the following 
merry vengeance. To wajday him at night, fifteen armed 
men to one, and to slit his nose with a penknife. Like 
master, like man. The king's favorite, the Duke of Buck- 
ingham, was strongly suspected of setting on an assassin 
to murder the Duke of Ormond as he was returning 
home from a dinner; and that duke's spirited son, Lord 
Ossort, was so persuaded of his guilt, that he said to him 
at court, even as he stood beside the king, "My lord, I 
know very well that you are at the bottom of this late at- 
tempt upon my father. But I give you warning, if he 
ever come to a violent end, his blood shall be upon you, 
and wherever I meet you I will pistol you! I will do so, 
though I find you standing behind the king's chair ; and I 
tell you this in his majesty's, presence, that you may be 
quite sure of my doing what I threaten." Those were 
merry times indeed. 



CHARLES THE SECOND. 383 

There was a fellow named Blood, who was seized for 
making, with two companions, an andacious attempt to 
steal the crown, the globe, and sceptre, from the place 
where the jewels were kept in the Tower. This robber, 
who was a swaggering ruffian, being taken, declared that 
he was the man who had endeavored to kill the Duke of 
Ormond, and that he had meant to kill the king too, but 
was overawed by the majesty of his appearance, when he 
might otherwise have done it, as he was bathing at Batter- 
sea. The king being but an ill-looking fellow, I don't be- 
lieve a word of this. Whether he was nattered, or whether 
he knew that Buckingham had really set Blood on to mur- 
der the duke, is uncertain. But it is quite certain that he 
pardoned this thief, gave him an estate of five hundred a 
year in Ireland (which had had the honor of giving him 
birth), and presented him at court to the debauched lords 
and the shameless ladies, who made a great deal of him, — 
as I have-Bo doubtvthey would have made of the Devil him- 
self, if the king had introduced him. 

Infamously pensioned as he was, the king still wanted 
money, and consequently was obliged to call parliaments. 
In these, the great object of the Protestants was to thwart 
the Catholic Duke of York, who married a second time ; 
his new wife being a young lady only fifteen years old, the 
Catholic sister of the Duke of Modena. In this they 
were seconded by the Protestant Dissenters, though to their 
own disadvantage : since, to exclude Catholics from power, 
they were even willing to exclude themselves. The king's 
object was to pretend to be a Protestant, while he was really 
a Catholic ; to swear to the bishops that he was devoutly 
attached to the English Church, while he knew he had bar- 
gained it away to the King of France ; and by cheating and 
deceiving them, and all who were attached to royalty, to 
become despotic and.be powerful enough to confess what a 
rascal he was. Meantime, the King of France, knowing 
his merry pensioner well, intrigued with the king's oppo- 
nents in parliament, as well as with the king and his friends. 

The fears that the country had of the Catholic religion 
being restored, if the Duke of York should come to the 
throne, and the low cunning of the king in pretending to 
share their alarms, led to some very terrible results. A 
certain Dr. Tonge, a dull clergyman in the city, fell into 
the hands of a certain Titus Oates, a most infamous char- 



384 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

acter, who pretended to have acquired among the Jesuits 
abroad a knowledge of a great plot for the murder of the 
king, and the re-establishment of the Catholic religion. 
Titus Oates, being produced by this unlucky Dr. Tonge and 
solemnly examined before the council, contradicted himself 
in a thousand ways, told the most ridiculous and improbable 
stories, and implicated Coleman, the secretary of the 
Duchess of York. Now, although what he charged against 
Coleman was not true, and although you and I know very 
well that the real dangerous Catholic plot was that one with 
the King of France of which the Merry Monarch was him- 
self the head, there happened to be found among Coleman's 
papers, some letters, in which he did praise the days of 
Bloody Queen Mary, and abuse the Protestant religion. 
This was great good fortune for Titus, as it seemed to con- 
firm him ; but better still was in store. Sir Edmundbury 
Godfrey, the magistrate who had first examined him, 
being unexpectedly found dead near Primrose Hill, was 
confidently believed to have been killed by the Catholics. 
I think there is no doubt that he had been melancholy mad, 
and that he killed himself ; but he had a great Protestant 
funeral, and Titus was called the Saver of the Nation, and 
received a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year. 

As soon as Oates's wickedness had met with this success, 
up started another villain, named William Bedloe, who, 
attracted by a reward of five hundred pounds offered for the 
apprehension of the murderers of Godfrey, came forward and 
charged two Jesuits and some other persons with having 
committed it at the queen's desire. Oates, going into part- 
nership with this new informer, had the audacity to accuse 
the poor queen herself of high treason. Then appeared a 
third informer, as bad as either of the two, and accused a 
Catholic banker, named Stayley of having said that the 
king was the greatest rogue in the world (which would not 
have been far from the truth), and that he would kill him 
with his own hand. This banker being at once tried and 
executed, Coleman and two others were tried and executed. 
Then a miserable wretch named Prance, a Catholic silver- 
smith, being accused by Bedloe, was tortured into confess- 
ing that he had taken part in Godfrey's murder, and into 
accusing three other men of having committed it. Then 
five Jesuits were accused by Oates, Bedloe, and Prance 
together, and were all found guilty, and executed on the 



CHARLES THE SECOND. 385 

same kind of contradictory and absurd evidence. The 
queen's physician and three monks were next put on their 
trial; but Oates and Bedloe had for the time gone far 
enough, and these four were acquitted. The public mind, 
however, was so full of a Catholic plot, and so strong against 
the Duke of York, that James consented to obey a written 
order from his brother, and to go with his family to Brus- 
sels, provided that his rights should never be sacrificed in 
his absence to the Duke of Monmouth. The House of 
Commons, not satisfied with this as the king hoped, passed 
a bill to exclude the duke from ever succeeding to the 
throne. In return, the king dissolved the parliament. He 
had deserted his old favorite, the' Duke of Buckingham, 
who was now in the opposition. 

To give any sufficient idea of the miseries of Scotland in 
this merry reign would occupy a hundred pages. Because 
the people would not have bishops, and were resolved to 
stand by their solemn League and Covenant, such cruelties 
were inflicted upon them as make the blood run cold. Fero- 
cious dragoons galloped through the country to punish the 
peasants for deserting the churches ; sons were hanged up 
at their fathers' doors for refusing to disclose where their 
fathers were concealed ; wives were tortured to death for not 
betraying their husbands ; people were taken out of their 
fields and gardens, and shot on the public road, without 
trial ; lighted matches were tied to the fingers of prisoners, 
and a most horrible torment, called the Boot, was invented, 
and constantly applied, which ground and mashed the vic- 
tims' legs with iron wedges. Witnesses were tortured as 
well as prisoners. All the prisons were full ; all the gibbets 
were heavy with bodies ; murder and plunder devastated 
the whole country. In spite of all, the Covenanters were 
by no means to be dragged into the churches, and persisted 
in worshipping God as they thought right. A body of fero- 
cious Highlanders, turned upon them from the mountains 
of their own country, had no greater effect than the Eng- 
lish dragoons under Grahame of Claverhouse, the most 
cruel and rapacious of all their enemies, whose name will ' 
ever be cursed through the length and breadth of Scotland. 
Archbishop Sharp had ever aided and abetted all these out- 
rages. But he fell at last ; for, when the injuries of the 
Scottish people were at their height, he was seen, in his 
coach-and-six coming across a moor, by a body of men, 

33 



386 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

headed by one John Balfour, who were waiting for ano- 
ther of their oppressors. Upon this they cried out that 
Heaven had delivered him into their hands, and killed him 
with many wounds. If ever a man deserved such a death, 
I think Archbishop Sharp did. 

It made a great noise directly, and the Merry Monarch 
(strongly suspected of having goaded the Scottish people 
on, that he might have an excuse for a greater army than 
the Parliament were willing to give him), sent down his 
son, the Duke of Monmouth, as commander-in-chief, with 
instructions to attack the Scottish rebels, or Whigs, as they 
were called, whenever he came up with them. Marching 
with ten thousand men from Edinburgh, he found them, in 
number four or five thousand, drawn up at Bothwell Bridge, 
by the Clyde. They were soon dispersed ; and Monmouth 
showed a more humane character towards them than he had 
shown towards that member of parliament whose nose he 
had caused to be slit with a penknife. But the Duke of 
Lauderdale was their bitter foe, and sent Claverhouse to 
finish them. 

As the Duke of York became more and more unpopular, 
the Duke of Monmouth became more and more popular. 
It would have been decent in the latter not to have voted 
in favor of the renewed bill for the exclusion of James from 
the throne ; but he did so, much to the king's amusement, 
who used to sit in the House of Lords, by the fire, hearing 
the debates, which he said were as good as a play. The 
House of Commons passed the bill by a large majority, and 
it was carried up to the House of Lords by Lord Bussell, 
one of the best of the leaders on the Protestant side. It 
was rejected there, chiefly because the bishops helped the 
king to get rid of it ; and the fear of Catholic plots revived 
again. There had been another got up, by a fellow out of 
Newgate, named Dangerfield, which is more famous than 
it deserves to be, under the name of the Meal-Tub Plot. 
This jail-bird having been got out of Newgate by a Mrs. 
Cellier, a Catholic nurse, had turned Catholic himself, 
and pretended that he knew of a plot among the Presbyte- 
rians against the king's life. This was very pleasant to the 
Duke of York, who hated the Presbyterians, who returned 
the compliment. He gave Dangerfield twenty guineas, and | 
sent him to the king, his brother. But Dangerfield break- 
ing down altogether in his charge, and being sent back to 



CHARLES THE SECOND. 387 

Newgate, almost astonished the duke out of his five senses 
by suddenly swearing that the Catholic nurse had put that 
false design into his head, and that what he really knew 
about was a Catholic plot against the king ; the evidence 
of which would be found in some papers, concealed in a 
meal-tub in Mrs. Cellier's house. There they were of 
course, — for he had put them there himself, — and so 
the tub gave the name to the plot. But the nurse was 
acquitted, on her trial, and it came to nothing. 

Lord Ashley, of the Cabal, was now Lord Shaftesbury, 
and was strong against the succession of the Duke of York. 
The House of Commons, aggravated to the utmost extent, 
as we may well suppose, by suspicions of the king's con- 
spiracy with the King of France, made a desperate point 
of the exclusion still, and were bitter against the Catholics 
generally. So unjustly bitter were they, I grieve to say, 
that they impeached the venerable Lord Stafford, a Catho- 
lic nobleman, seventy years old, of a design to kill the king. 
The witnesses were that atrocious Oates and two other birds 
of the same feather. He was found guilty, on evidence quite 
as foolish as it was Mse, and was beheaded on Tower Hill. 
The people were opposed to him when he first appeared 
upon the scaffold ; but, when he had addressed them and 
shown them how innocent he was, and how wickedly he was 
sent there, their better nature was aroused, and they said, 
" We believe you, my lord. God bless you, my lord ! " 

The House of Commons refused to let the king have any 
money until he should consent to the Exclusion Bill ; but, 
as he could get it and did get it from his master, the King 
of France, he could afford to hold them very cheap. He 
called a parliament at Oxford, to which he went down with 
a great show of being armed and protected, as if he were in 
danger of his life, and to which the opposition members also 
went armed and protected, alleging that they were in fear 
of the Papists, who were numerous among the king's guards. 
However, they went on with the Exclusion Bill, and were 
so earnest upon it, that they would have carried it again, if 
the king had not popped his crown and state robes into a 
sedan-chair, bundled himself into it along with them, hur- 
ried down to the chamber where the House of Lords met, 
and dissolved the Parliament. After which he scampered 
home, and the members of Parliament scampered home, 
too, as fast as their legs could carry them. 



388 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

The Duke of York, then residing in Scotland, had, under 
the law which excluded Catholics from public trust, no 
right whatever to public employment. Nevertheless, he 
was openly employed as the king's representative in Scot- 
land, and there gratified his sullen and cruel nature to his 
heart's content by directing the dreadful cruelties against 
the Covenanters. x There were two ministers, named Car- 
gill and Cameron, who had escaped from the battle of 
Bothwell Bridge, and who returned to Scotland, and raised 
the miserable but still brave and unsubdued Covenanters 
afresh, under the name of Cameronians. As Cameron pub- 
licly posted a declaration that the king was a foresworn 
tyrant, no mercy was shown to his unfortunate followers 
after he was slain in battle. The Duke of York, who was 
particularly fond of the Boot, and derived great pleasure 
from having it applied, offered their lives to some of these 
people if they would cry on the scaffold, "God save the 
king!" But their relations, friends, and countrymen had 
been so barbarously tortured and murdered in this merry 
reign, that they preferred to die, and did die. The duke 
then obtained his merry brother's permission to hold a par- 
liament in Scotland, which first, with most shameless deceit, 
confirmed the laws for securing the Protestant religion against 
Popery, and then declared that nothing must or should pre- 
vent the succession of the popish duke. After this double- 
faced, beginning, it established an oath which no human 
being could understand, but which everybody was to take, 
as a proof that his religion was the lawful religion. The 
Earl of Argyle, taking it with the explanation that he did 
not consider it to prevent him from favoring any alteration, 
either in the Church or State, which was not inconsistent 
with the Protestant religion or with his loyalty, was tried 
for high treason before a Scottish jury, of which the Mar- 
quis of Montrose was foreman, and was found guilty. 
He escaped the scaffold, for that time, by getting away, in 
the disguise of a page, in the train of his daughter, Lady 
Sophia Lindsay. It was absolutely proposed, by certain 
members of the Scottish Council, that this lady should be 
whipped through the streets of Edinburgh. But this was 
too much even for the duke, who had the manliness then 
(he had very little at most times) to remark that English- 
men were not accustomed to treat ladies in that manner. In 
those merry times, nothing could equal the brutal servility 



CHARLES THE SECOND. • 389 

of the Scottish fawners but the conduct of similar degraded 
beings in England. 

After the settlement of these little affairs, the duke re- 
turned to England, and soon resumed his place at the 
council, and his office of high admiral, — all this by his 
brother's favor, and in open defiance of the law. It would 
have been no loss to the country, if he had been drowned 
when his ship, in going to Scotland to fetch his family, 
struck on a sand-bank, and was lost with two hundred souls 
on board. But he escaped in a boat with some friends ; 
and the sailors were so brave and unselfish, that, when 
they saw him rowing away, they gave three cheers, while 
they themselves were going down forever. 

The Merry Monarch, having got rid of his parliament, 
went to work to make himself despotic with all speed. 
Having . had the villany to order the execution of Oliver 
Plunket, Bishop of Armagh, falsely accused of a plot 
to establish Popery in that country by means of a Erench 
army, — the very thing this royal traitor was himself trying 
to do at home, — and having tried to ruin Lord Shaftes- 
bury and failed, he turned his hand to controlling the 
corporations all over the country ; because, if he could only 
do that, he could get what juries he chose, to bring in per- 
jured verdicts, and could get what members he chose 
returned to Parliament. These merry times produced, and 
made chief justice of the Court of King's Bench, a 
drunken ruffian of the name of Jeffreys ; a red-faced, 
swollen, bloated, horrible creature, with a bullying, roaring 
voice, and a more savage nature perhaps than was ever 
lodged in any human breast. This monster was the merry 
monarch's especial favorite ; and he testified his admiration 
of him by giving him a ring from his own finger, which 
the people used to call Judge Jeffrey's Bloodstone. Him 
the king employed to go about and bully the corporations, 
beginning with London ; or, as Jeffreys himself elegantly 
called it, " to give them a lick with the rough side of his 
tongue." And he did it so thoroughly, that they soon be- 
came the basest and most sycophantic bodies in the king- 
dom, except the University of Oxford, which, in that re- 
spect, was quite pre-eminent and unapproachable. 

Lord Shaftesbury (who died soon after the king's failure 
against him), Lord William Russell, the Duke of 
Monmouth, Lord Howard, Lord Jersey, Algernon 

33* 



390 . A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Sidney, John Hampden (grandson of the great Hamp- 
den), and some others used to hold a council together after 
the dissolution of the Parliament, arranging what it might 
be necessary to do, if the king carried his popish plot to 
the utmost height. Lord Shaftesbury, having been much 
the most violent of this party, brought two violent men 
into their secrets, — Rumsey, who had been a soldier in 
the Republican army; and West, a lawyer. These two 
knew an old officer of Cromwell's, called Rumbold, who 
had married a maltster's widow, and so had come into pos- 
session of a solitary dwelling called the Rye House, near 
Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire. Rumbold said to them what 
a capital place this house of his would be from which to 
shoot at the king, who often passed there going to and fro 
from Newmarket. They liked the idea, and entertained it. 
But one of their body gave information; and they, to- 
gether with Shepherd, a wine-merchant, Lord Russell, 
Algernon Sidney, Lord Essex, Lord Howard, and 
Hampden, were all arrested. 

Lord Russell might have easily escaped, but scorned to 
do so, being innocent of any wrong ; Lord Essex might 
have easily escaped, but scorned to do so, lest his flight 
should prejudice Lord Russell. 'But it weighed upon his 
mind that he had brought into their council Lord Howard, 
— who now turned a miserable traitor, — against a great 
dislike Lord Russell had always had of him. He could 
not bear the reflection, and destroyed himself before Lord 
Russell was brought to trial at the Old Bailey. 
s He knew very well that he had nothing to hope, having 
always been manful in the Protestant cause against the 
two false brothers, the one on the throne, and the other 
standing next to it. He had a wife, one of the noblest and 
best of women, who acted as his secretary on his trial, who 
comforted him in his prison, who supped with him on the 
night before he died, and whose love and virtue and devo- 
tion have made her name imperishable. Of course, he 
was found guilty, and was sentenced to be beheaded in 
Lincoln's Inn-fields, not many yards from his own house. 
When he had parted from his children on the evening 
before his death, his wife still staid with him until ten 
o'clock at night; and when their final separation in this 
world was over, and he had kissed her many times, he still 
sat for a long while in his prison talking of her goodness. 



CHARLES THE SECOND. 391 

Hearing the rain fall fast at that time, he calmly said, 
" Such a rain to-morrow will spoil a great show, which is a 
dull thing on a rainy day." At midnight he went to bed, 
and slept till four; even when his servant called him, he 
fell asleep again while his clothes were being made ready. 
He rode to the scaffold in his own carriage, attended by 
two famous clergymen, Tillotson and Burnet, and sang 
a psalm to himself very softly as he went along. He was 
as quiet and steady as if he had been going out for an ordi- 
nary ride. After saying that he was surprised to see so 
great a crowd, he laid down his head upon the block, as if 
upon the pillow of his bed, and had it struck off at the sec- 
ond blow. His noble wife was busy for him even then ; 
for that true-hearted lady printed and widely circulated his 
last words, of which he had given her a copy. They made 
the blood of all the honest men in England boil. 

The University of Oxford distinguished itself on the 
very same day by pretending to believe that the accusation 
against Lord Russell was true, and by calling the king, in 
a written paper, the Breath of their Nostrils and the 
Anointed of the Lord. This paper the Parliament after- 
wards caused to be burned by the common hangman; 
which I am sorry for, as I wish it had been framed and 
hung up in some public place, as a monument of baseness 
for the scorn of mankind. 

Next, came the trial of Algernon Sidney, at which 
Jeffreys presided, like a great crimson toad, sweltering and 
swelling with rage. u I pray God, Mr. Sidney," said this 
chief justice of a merry reign, after passing sentence, 
" to work in you a temper fit to go to the other world, for I 
see you are not fit for this." — " My lord," said the prisoner, 
composedly holding out his arm, " feel my pulse, and see 
if I be disordered. I thank Heaven I never was in better 
temper than I am now." Algernon Sidney was executed on 
Tower Hill, on the 7th of December, 1683. He died a 
hero, and died, in his own words, "For that good old cause 
in which he had been engaged from his youth, and for 
which God had so often and so wonderfully declared him- 
self." 

The Duke of Monmouth had been making his uncle, the 
Duke of York, very jealous, by going about the country in 
a royal sort of way, playing at the people's games, becoming 
godfather to their children, and even touching for the 



392 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

king's evil, or stroking the faces of the. sick to cure them, — . 
though, for the matter of that, I should say he did them 
about as much good as any crowned king could have done. 
His father had got him to write a letter confessing his 
having had a part in* the conspiracy for which Lord Russell 
had been beheaded; but he was ever a weak man, and as 
soon as he had written it, he was ashamed of it and got it 
back again. For fhis, he was banished to the Nether- 
lands ; but he soon returned, and had an interview with his 
father, unknown to his uncle. It would seem that he was 
coming into the Merry Monarch's favor again, and that 
the Duke of York was sliding out of it, when death 
appeared to the merry galleries at Whitehall, and aston- 
ished the debauched lords and gentlemen, and the shame- 
less ladies, very considerably. 

On Monday, the 2d of February, 1685, the merry 
pensioner and servant of the King of France fell down in 
a fit of apoplexy. By the Wednesday his case was hope- 
less, and on the Thursday he was told so. As he made a, 
difficulty about taking the sacrament from the Protestant 
Bishop of Bath, the Duke of York got all who were present 
away from the bed, and asked his brother, in a whisper, if 
he should send for a Catholic priest ? The king replied, 
" For God's sake, brother, do ! " The Duke smuggled in, 
up the back stairs, disguised in a wig and gown, a priest 
named Huddleston, who had saved the king's life after 
the battle of Worcester, — telling him that this worthy man 
in the wig had once saved his body, and was now come to 
save his soul. 

The Merry Monarch lived through that night, and died 
before noon on the next day, which was Friday, the 6th. 
Two of the last things he said were of a human sort, and 
your remembrance will give him the full benefit of them. 
When the queen sent to say she was too unwell to attend 
him, and to ask his pardon, he said, " Alas, poor woman ! she 
beg my pardon : I beg hers with all my heart. Take back 
that answer to her." And he also said, in reference to 
Nell Gwyn, " Do not let poor Nelly starve." 

He died in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and the 
twenty-fifth of his reign. 



JAMES THE SECOND. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND. 

King James the Second was a man so very disagree- 
able, that even the best of historians has favored his 
brother Charles, as becoming, by comparison, quite a pleas- 
ant character. The one object of his short reign was to re- 
establish the Catholic religion in England ; and this he dog- 
gedly pursued with such a stupid obstinacy that his career 
very soon came to a close. 

The first thing he did was to assure his council that he 
would make it his endeavor to preserve the government, 
both in Church and State, as it was by law established; 
and that he would always take care to defend and support 
the Church. Great public acclamations were raised over 
this fair speech ; and a great deal was said, from the pulpits 
and elsewhere, about the word of a king which was never 
broken, by credulous people who little supposed that he had 
formed a secret council for Catholic affairs, of which a mis- 
chievous Jesuit, called Father Petre, was one of the 
chief members. With tears of joy on his eyes, he received, 
as the beginning of his pension from the King of France, 
five hundred thousand livres ; yet, with a mixture of mean- 
ness and arrogance that belonged to his contemptible char- 
acter, he was always jealous of making some show of being 
independent of the King of France, while he pocketed his 
money. As — notwithstanding his publishing two papers 
in favor of Popery (and not likely to do it much service, I 
should think), written by the king, his brother, and found 
in his strong box ; and his open display of himself attend- 
ing mass — the Parliament was very obsequious, and 
(granted him a large sum of money, he began his reign with 
a belief that he could do what he pleased, and with a 
determination to do it. 

Before we proceed to its principal events, let us dispose 



394 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

of Titus Oates. He was tried for perjury, a fortnight after 
the coronation, and, besides being very heavily fined, was 
sentenced to^stand twice in the pillory, to be whipped from 
Aldgate to Newgate one day, and from Newgate to Tyburn 
two days afterwards, and to stand in the pillory five times 
a year as long as he lived. This fearful sentence was 
actually inflicted on the rascal. Being unable to stand, 
after his first flogging, he was dragged on a sledge from 
Newgate to Tyburn, and flogged as he was drawn along. 
He was so strong a villain that he did not die under the 
torture, but lived to be afterwards pardoned and rewarded, ! 
though not to be ever believed in any more. Dangerfield, 
the only other one of that crew left alive, was not so fortu- 
nate. He was almost killed by a whipping from Newgate 
to Tyburn ; and, as if that were not punishment enough, a 
ferocious barrister of Grey's Inn gave him a poke in the 
eye with his cane, which caused his death, — for which the ; 
ferocious barrister was deservedly tried and executed. 

As soon as James was on the throne, Argyle and Mon- 
mouth went from Brussels to Rotterdam, and attended a 
meeting of Scottish exiles held there to concert measures 
for a rising in England. It was agreed that Argyle should 
effect a landing in Scotland, and Monmouth in England ; 
and that two Englishmen should be sent with Argyle to be 
in his confidence, and two Scotchmen with the Duke of 
Monmouth. < 

Argyle was the first to act upon this contract. But two 
of his men being taken prisoners at the Orkney Islands, 
the government became aware of his intention, and was able 
to act against him with such vigor as to prevent his raising 
more than two or three thousand Highlanders, although he 
sent a fiery cross, by trusty messengers, from clan to clan, 
and from glen to glen, as the*custoni then was when those 
wild people were to be excited by their chiefs. As he was 
moving towards Glasgow with his small force, he was be- 
trayed by some of his followers, taken, and carried, with his 
hands tied behind his back, to his old prison in Edinburgh 
Castle. James ordered him to be executed, on his old, 
shamefully unjust sentence, within three days ; and he ap- 
pears to have been anxious that his legs should have been j 
pounded with his old favorite, the Boot. However, the Boot 
was not applied ; he was simply beheaded, and his head was 
set upon the top of Edinburgh jail. One of those English- | 



JAMES THE SECOND. 395 

men who had been assigned to him was that old soldier, 
Ruinbold, the master of the Rye House. He was sorely- 
wounded, and within a week after Argyle had suffered with 
great courage, was brought up for trial, lest he should die, 
and disappoint the king. He, too, was executed, after de- 
fending himself with great spirit, and saying that he did 
not believe that God had made the greater part of mankind 
to carry saddles on their backs, and bridles in their mouths, 
and to be ridden by a few, booted and spurred for the pur- 
pose ; in which I thoroughly agree with Rumbold. 

The Duke of Monmouth, partly through being detained 
and partly through idling his time away, was five or six 
weeks behind his friend when he landed at Lyme, in Dor- 
set : having at his right hand an unlucky nobleman called 
Lord Grey of Were, who of himself would have ruined 
a far more promising expedition. He immediately set up 
his standard in the market-place, and proclaimed the king 
a tyrant and a popish usurper, and I know not what else ; 
charging him, not only with what he had done, which was 
bad enough, but with what neither he nor anybody else had 
done, such as setting fire to London, and poisoning the late 
king. Raising some four thousand men by these means, he 
marched on to Taunton, where there were many Protestant 
dissenters who were strongly opposed to the Catholics. 
Here, both the rich and poor turned out , to receive him, 
ladies waved a welcome to him from all the windows as he 
passed along the streets, flowers were strewn in his way, 
and every compliment and honor that could be devised was 
showered upon him. Among the rest, twenty young ladies 
came forward, in their best clothes, and in their brightest 
beauty, and gave him a Bible ornamented with their own 
fair hands, together with other presents. 

Encouraged by this hqmage, he proclaimed himself 
king, and went on to Bridgewater. But here, the govern- 
ment troops, under the Earl of Feversham, were close 
at hand ; and he was so dispirited at finding that he made 
but few powerful friends after all, that it was a question 
whether he should disband his army and endeavor to escape. 
It was resolved, at the instance of that unlucky Lord Grey, 
to make a night attack on the king's army, as it lay en- 
camped on the edge of a morass called Sedgemoor. The 
horsemen were commanded by the same unlucky lord, who 
was not a brave man. He gave up the battle almost at the 



396 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

first obstacle, which was a deep drain ; and although the 
poor countrymen who had turned out for Monmouth foughl 
bravely with scythes, poles, pitchforks, and such po< 
weapons as they had, they were soon dispersed by tin 
trained soldiers, and fled in all directions. When the Duke 
of Monmouth himself fled was not known in the confusion 
but the unlucky Lord Grey was taken early next day, anc 
then another of the party was taken, who confessed tin 
he had parted from the duke only four hours before. Strict 
search being made, he was found disguised as a peasant 
hidden in a ditfeh under fern and nettles, with a few peas ii 
his pocket which he had gathered in the fields to eat. Tin 
only other articles he had upon him were a few papers an( 
little books : one of the latter being a strange jumble, ii 
his own writing, of charms, songs, recipes, and prayers 
He was completely broken. He wrote a miserable letter tc 
the king, beseeching and entreating to be allowed to set 
him. When he was taken to London, and conveyed bounc 
into the king's presence, he crawled to him on his knees 
and made a most degrading exhibition. As James nevei 
forgave or relented towards anybody, he was not likely U 
soften towards the issuer of the Lyme proclamation, so In 
told the suppliant to prepare for death. 

On the 15th of July, 1685, this unfortunate favorite of 
the people was brought out to die on Tower Hill. Th( 
crowd was immense, and the tops of all the houses were 
covered with gazers. He had seen his wife, the daughter 
of the Duke of Buccleuch, in the Tower, and had talked 
much of a lady whom he loved far better, — the Lady Har- 
riet Wentworth, — who was one of the last persons he 
remembered in his life. Before laying down his head upon 
the block, he felt the edge of the axe, and told the execu- 
tioner that he feared it was not sharp enough, and that the 
axe was not heavy enough. On the executioner replying 
that it was of the proper kind, the duke said, " I pray you 
have a care, and do not use me so awkwardly as you used 
my Lord Russell." The executioner, made nervous by this, 
and trembling, struck once, and merely gashed him in the 
neck. Upon this, the Duke of Monmouth raised his head, 
and looked the man reproachfully in the face. Then he 
struck twice, and then thrice, and then threw down the axe, 
and cried out in a voice of horror that he could not finish 
that work. The sheriffs, however, threatening him with 



JAMES THE SECOND. 397 

what should be done to himself if he did not, he took it up 
again, and struck a fourth time and a fifth time. Then the 
wretched head at last fell off, and James, Duke of Mon- 
mouth, was dead, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. He 
was a showy, graceful man, with many popular qualities, 
and had found much favor in the open hearts of the Eng- 
lish. 

The atrocities committed by the government which fol- 
lowed this Monmouth rebellion form the blackest and most 
lamentable page in English history. The poor peasants, 
having been dispersed with great loss, and their leaders 
having been taken, one would think that the implacable 
king might have been satisfied. But no ; he let loose upon 
them, among other intolerable monsters, a Col. Kirk, 
who had served against the Moors, and whose soldiers — 
called by the people Kirk's lambs, because they bore a lamb 
upon their flag, as the emblem of Christianity — were 
worthy 'of their leader. The atrocities committed by these 
demons in human shape are far too horrible to be related 
here. It is enough to say, that besides most ruthlessly 
murdering and robbing them, and ruining them by making 
them buy their pardons at the price of all they possessed, it 
was one of Kirk's favorite amusements, as he and his 
officers sat drinking after dinner, and toasting the king, to 
have batches of prisoners hanged outside the windows for 
the company's diversion ; and that when their feet quivered 
in the convulsions of death, he used to swear that they 
should have music to their dancing, and would order the 
drums to beat and the trumpets to play. The detestable 
king informed him, as an acknowledment of these services, 
that he was " very well satisfied with his proceedings." But 
the king's great delight was in the proceedings of Jeffreys, 
now a peer, who went down into the West, with four other 
judges, to try persons accused of having had any share in 
the rebellion. The king pleasantly called this " Jeffreys's 
campaign." The people down in that part of the .country 
remember it to this day as The Bloody Assize. 

It began at Winchester, where a poor deaf old lady, Mrs. 
Alicia Lisle, the widow of one of the judges of Charles 
the First (who had been murdered abroad by some royalist 
assassins), was charged with having given shelter in her 
house to two fugitives from Sedgemoor. Three times the 
jury refused to find her guilty, until Jeffreys bullied and 

31 



398 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

frightened them into that false verdict. When he had ex- 
torted it from them, he said, u Gentlemen, if I had been one 
of you, and she had been my own mother, I would have 
found her guilty," — as I dare say he would. He sentenced 
her to be burned alive that very afternoon. The clergy of 
the cathedral and some others interfered in her favor, and 
she was beheaded within a week. As a high mark of his 
approbation, the king made Jeffreys Lord Chancellor ; and 
he then went on to Dorchester, to Exeter, to Taunton, and 
to Wells. It is astonishing, when we read of the enormous 
injustice and barbarity of this beast, to know that no one 
struck him dead on the judgment-seat. It was enough for 
any man or woman to be accused by an enemy, before Jef- 
freys, to be found guilty of high treason. One man who 
pleaded not guilty, he ordered to be taken out of court upon 
the instant, and hanged ; and this so terrified the prisoners 
in general that they mostly pleaded guilty at once. At 
Dorchester alone, in the course of a few days, Jeffreys 
hanged eighty people ; besides whipping, transporting, im- 
prisoning, and selling as slaves, great numbers. He exe- 
cuted, in all, two hundred and fifty, or three hundred. 

These executions took place among the neighbors and 
friends of the sentenced in thirty-six towns and villages. 
The bodies were mangled, steeped in caldrons of boiling 
pitch and tar, and hung up by the roadsides, in the streets, 
over the very churches. The sight and smell of heads and 
limbs, the hissing and bubbling of the infernal caldrons, 
and the tears and terrors of the people, were dreadful be- 
yond all description. One rustic, who was forced to steep 
the remains in the black pot, was ever afterwards called 
" Tom Boilman." The hangman has ever since been called 
Jack Ketch, because a man of that name went hanging 
and hanging, all day long, in the train of Jeffreys. You 
will hear much of the horrors of the great French Revolu- 
tion. Many and terrible they were, there is no doubt ; but 
I know of nothing worse done by the maddened people of 
France, in that awful time, than was done by the highest 
judge in England, with the express approval of the King of 
England, in the Bloody Assize. 

Nor was even this all. Jeffreys was as fond of money 
for himself as of misery for others ; and he sold pardons 
wholesale to fill his pockets. The king ordered, at one 
time, a thousand prisoners to be given to certain of his 



JAMES THE SECOND. 399 

favorites, in order that they might bargain with them for 
their pardons. The young ladies of Taunton who had pre- 
sented the Bible, were bestowed upon the maids of honor at 
court ; and those precious ladies made very hard bargains 
with them indeed. When the Bloody Assize was at its 
most dismal height, the king was diverting himself with 
horse-races in the very place where Mrs. Lisle had been exe- 
cuted. When Jeffreys had done his worst, and came home 
again, he was particularly complimented in the Royal Ga- 
zette ; and when the king heard, that, through drunkenness 
and raging, he was very ill? his odious majesty remarked 
that such another man could not easily be found in Eng- 
land. Besides all this, a former sheriff of London, named 
Cornish, was hanged within sight of his own house, after 
an abominably conducted trial, for having had a share in 
the Bye House Plot, on evidence given by Bumsey, which 
that villain was obliged to confess was directly opposed to 
the evidence he had given on the trial of Lord Russell. 
And on the very same day, a worthy widow, named Eliza- 
beth Gaunt, was burned alive at Tyburn, for having shel- 
tered a wretch who himself gave evidence against her. She 
settled the fuel about herself with her own hands, so that 
the names should reach her quickly ; and nobly said, with 
her last breath, that she had obeyed the sacred command of 
God to give refuge to the outcast, and not to betray the 
wanderer. 

After all this hanging, beheading, burning, boiling, mu- 
tilating, exposing, robbing, transporting, and selling into 
slavery, of his unhappy subjects, the king not unnaturally 
thought that he could do whatever he would. So he went 
to work to change the religion of the country with all pos- 
sible speed ; and what he did was this. 

He first of all tried to get rid of what was called the 
Test Act — which prevented the Catholics from nolding 
public employments — by his own power of dispensing with 
the penalties. He tried it in one case ; and eleven of the 
twelve judges deciding in his favor, he exercised it in 
three others, being those of three dignitaries of University 
College, Oxford, who had become Papists, and ^ whom he 
kept in their places and sanctioned. He revived the hated 
Ecclesiastical Commission, to get rid of Compton, Bishop 
of London, who manfully opposed him. He solicited the 
Pope to favor England with an ambassador ; which the Pope 



400 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

(who was a sensible man then) rather unwillingly did. He 
flourished Father Petre before the eyes of the people on all 
possible occasions. He favored the establishment of con- 
vents in several parts of London. He was delighted to 
have the streets, and even the court itself, filled with monks 
and friars in the habits of their orders. He constantly 
endeavored to make Catholics of the Protestants about him. 
He held private interviews, which he called "closetings," 
with those members of parliament who held offices, to per- 
suade them to consent to the design he had in view. When 
they did not consent, they were removed, or resigned of 
themselves, and their places were given to Catholics. Pie 
displaced Protestant officers from the army, by every means 
in his power, and got Catholics into their places too. He 
tried the same thing with the corporations, and also (though 
not so successfully) with the lord lieutenants of counties. 
To terrify the people into the endurance of all these meas- 
ures, he kept an army of fifteen thousand men encamped 
on Hounslow Heath, where mass was openly performed in 
the general's tent, and where priests went among the sol- 
diers, endeavoring to persuade them to become Catholics. 
For circulating a paper among those men advising them to 
be true to their religion, a Protestant clergymen, named 
Johnson, the Chaplain of the late Lord Russell, was actu- 
ally sentenced to stand three times in the pillory, and was 
actually whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. He dismissed 
his own brother-in-law from his council because he was a 
Protestant, and made a privy councillor of the before-men- 
tioned Father Petre. He handed Ireland over to Richard 
Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell, a worthless, dissolute 
knave, who played the same game there for his master, and 
who played the deeper game for himself of one day putting 
it under the proection of the French king. In going to 
these extremities, every man of sense and judgment among 
the Catholics, from the Pope to a porter, knew that the 
king was a mere bigoted fool, who would undo himself and 
the cause he sought to advance ; but he was deaf to all rea- 
son ; and, happily for England ever afterwards, went tum- 
bling off his throne in his own blind way. 

A spirit began to arise in the country, which the be- 
sotted blunderer little expected. He first found- it out in 
the University of Cambridge. Having made a Catholic 
a dean at Oxford, without any opposition, he tried to 



JAMES THE SECOND. 401 

make a monk a master of arts at Cambridge : which at- 
tempt the university resisted, and defeated him. He then 
went back to his favorite Oxford. On the death of the 
President of Magdalen College, he commanded that there 
should be elected to succeed him, one Mr. Anthony 
Farmer, whose only recommendation was, that he was of 
the king's religion. The university plucked up courage 
at last, and refused. The king substituted another man, 
and it still refused, resolving to stand by its own election 
of a Mr. Hough. The dull tyrant, upon this, punished 
Mr. Hough, and five and twenty more, by causing them to 
be expelled, and declared incapable of holding any church 
preferment ; then he proceeded to what he supposed to be 
his highest step, but to what was, in fact, his last plunge 
headforemost in his tumble off his throne. 

He had issued a declaration that there should be no 
religious tests or penal laws, in order to let in the Cath- 
olics more easily; but the Protestant dissenters, unmind- 
ful of themselves, had gallantly joined the regular church 
in opposing it tooth and nail. The king and Father 
Petre now resolved to have this read, on a certain Sun- 
day, in all the churches, and to order it to be circulated 
for that purpose by the bishops. The latter took counsel 
with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in disgrace ; 
and they resolved that the declaration should not be read, 
and that they would petition the king against it. The 
archbishop himself wrote out the petition ; and six bishops 
went into the king's bedchamber the same night to pre- 
sent it, to his infinite astonishment. Next day was the 
Sunday fixed for the reading, and it was only read by 
two hundred clergymen out of ten thousand. The king 
resolved, against all advice,' to prosecute the bishops in the 
Court of King's Bench ; and within three weeks they were 
summoned before the Privy Council, and committed to 
the Tower. As the six bishops were taken to that dis- 
mal place by water, the people, who were assembled in 
immense numbers, fell upon their knees and wept for them, 
and prayed for them. When they got to the Tower, the 
officers and soldiers on guard besought them for their 
blessing. While they were confined there, the soldiers 
every day drank to their release with loud shouts. When 
they were brought up to the Court of King's Bench for 
their trial, which the attorney-general said was for the 



402 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

high offence of censuring the government, and giving their 
opinion about affairs of state, they were attended by sim- 
ilar multitudes, and surrounded by a throng of noblemen 
and gentlemen. When the jury were out at seven o'clock 
at night to consider of their verdict, everybody (except 
the king) knew that they would rather starve than yield 
to the king's brewer, who was one of them, and wanted 
a verdict for his customer. When they came into court 
next morning, after resisting the brewer all night, and 
gave a verdict of not guilty, such a shout rose up in West- 
minster Hall as it had never heard before; and it was 
passed on among the people away to Temple Bar, and 
away again to the Tower. It did not pass only to the 
east, but passed to the west too, until it reached the Gamp 
at Hounslow, where the fifteen thousand soldiers took it 
up and echoed it. And still, when the dull king, who 
was then with Lord Feversham, heard the mighty roar, 
asked in alarm what it was, and was told that it was 
"nothing but the acquittal of the bishops," he said, in 
his dogged way, " Call you that nothing ? It is so much 
the worse for them." 

Between the petition and the trial, the queen had given 
birth to a son, which Father Petre rather thought was 
owing to St. Winifred. But I doubt if St. Winifred 
had much to do with it as the king's friend, inasmuch 
as the entirely new prospect of a Catholic successor (for 
both the king's daughters were Protestants) determined 
the Earls of Shrewsbury, Danby, and Devonshire, 
Lord Lumley, the Bishop of London, Admiral 
Bussell, and Col. Sidney, to invite the Prince of 
Orange over to England. The Royal Mole, seeing his 
danger at last, made, in his fright, many great conces- 
sions, besides raising an army of forty thousand men ; 
but the Prince of Orange was not a man for James 
the Second to cope with. His preparations were extra- 
ordinarily vigorous, and his mind was resolved. 

For a fortnight after the prince was ready to sail for 
England, a great wind from the west prevented the depar- 
ture of his fleet. Even when the wind lulled, and it did 
sail, it was dispersed by a storm, and was obliged to put 
back to refit. At last, on the 1st of November, 1688, the 
Protestant east wind, as it was long called, began to blow ; 
and on the 3d, the people of Dover and the people of 



JAMES THE SECOND. 403 

Calais saw a fleet twenty miles long sailing gallantly by, 
between the two places. On Monday, the 5th, it anchored 
at Torbay in Devonshire ; and the prince, with a splendid 
retinue of officers and men marched into Exeter. But the 
people in that western part of the country had suffered so 
much in the bloody assize, that they had lost heart. Few 
people joined him ; and he began to think of returning, 
and publishing the invitation he had received from those 
lords, as his justification for having come at all. At this 
crisis some of the gentry joined him ; the royal army be- 
gan to falter ; an engagement was signed, by which all who 
set their hands to it declared that they would support 
one another in defence of the laws and liberties of the 
three kingdoms, of the Protestant religion, and of the 
Prince of Orange. From that time the cause received no 
check ; the greatest towns in England began, one after 
another, to declare for the prince ; and he knew that it 
was all safe with him when the University of Oxford 
offered to melt down its plate, if he wanted any money. 

By this time the king was running about in a pitiable 
way, touching people for the king's evil in one place, re- 
viewing his troops in another, and bleeding from the nose 
in a third. The young prince was sent to Portsmouth, 
Father Petre went off like a shot to France, and there was 
a general and swift dispersal of all the priests and friars. 
One after another, the king's most important officers and 
friends deserted him, and went over to the prince. In the 
night his daughter Anne fled from Whitehall Palace ; and 
the Bishop of London, who had once been a soldier, rode 
before her with a drawn sword in his hand, and pistols at his 
saddle. " G-od help me," cried the miserable king : " my 
very children have forsaken me." In his wildness, after 
debating with such lords as were in London, whether he 
should or should not call a parliament, and after naming 
three of them to negotiate with the prince, he resolved to 
fly to France. He had the little Prince of Wales brought 
back from Portsmouth ; and the child and the queen crossed 
the river to Lambeth in an open boat, on a miserable wet 
night, and got safely away. This was on the night of the 
9th of December. 

At one o'clock on the morning of the 11th, the king, 
who had, in the mean time, received a letter from the Prince 
of Orange, stating his objects, got out of bed, told Lord 



404 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Northumberland, who lay "in his room, not to open the 
door until the usual hour in the morning, and went down 
the back stairs (the same I suppose by which the priest in 
the wig and gown had come up to his brother), and crossed 
the river in a small boat, sinking the great seal of England 
by the way. Horses having been provided, he rode, accom- : 
panied by Sir Edward Hales, to Feversham, where he 
embarked in a custom-house hoy. The master of this hoy, : 
wanting more ballast, ran into the Isle of Sheppy to get it, | 
where the fishermen and smugglers crowded about the J 
boat, and informed the king of their suspicions that he was 1 
a a hatchet-faced Jesuit." As they took his money, and j 
would not let him go,, he told them who he was, and that 
the Prince of Orange wanted to take his life ; and he I 
began to scream for a boat, — and then to cry, because he 
had lost a piece of wood on his ride which he called a frag- I 
ment of our Saviour's cross. He put himself into the ; 
hands of the lord lieutenant of the county, and his j 
detention was made known to the Prince of Orange at 
Windsor, — who, only wanting to get rid of him, and not 
caring where he went, so that he went away, was very 
much disconcerted that they did not let him go. However, 
there was nothing for it but to have him brought back, with 
some state in the way of Life Guards, to Whitehall. And 
as soon as he got there, in his infatuation, he heard mass, 
and set a Jesuit to say grace at his public dinner. 

The people had been thrown into the strangest state of 
confusion by his flight, and had taken it into their heads j 
that the Irish part of the army were going to murder 
the Protestants. Therefore, they set the * bells a-ringing, j 
and lighted watch-fires, and burned Catholic chapels, and 
looked about in all directions for Father Petre and the 
Jesuits, while the Pope's ambassador was running away in 
tfie dress of a footman. They found no Jesuits; but a 
man, who had once been, a frightened witness before 
Jeffreys in court, saw a swollen drunken face looking 
through a window down at Wapping, which he well re- 
membered. The face was in a sailor's dress ; but he knew 
it to be the face of that accursed judge, and he seized him. 
The people, to their lasting honor, did not tear him to 
pieces. After knocking him about a little, they took him, 
in the basest agonies of terror to the lord mayor, who sent 
him, at his own shrieking petition, to the Tower for safety. 
There he died. 



JAMES THE SECOND. 405 

Their "bewilderment continuing, the people now lighted 
bonfires and made rejoicings, as if they had any reason to 
be glad to have the king back again. But his stay was 
very short ; for the English guards were removed from 
Whitehall, Dutch guards were marched up to it, and he 
was told by one of his late ministers that the prince would 
enter London next day, and he had better go to Ham. He 
said Ham was a cold, damp place, and he would rather go 
to Rochester. He thought himself very cunning in this, 
as he meant to escape from Rochester to France. The 
Prince of Orange and his friends knew that perfectly well, 
md desired nothing more. So he went to Gravesend, in 
bis royal barge, attended by certain lords, and watched by 
Dutch troops, and pitied by the generous people, who were 
far more forgiving than he had ever been, when they saw 
him in his humiliation. On the night of the 23d of De- 
cember, not even then understanding that everybody 
Ranted to get rid of him, he went out absurdly, through 
pis Rochester garden, down to the Medway, and got away 
to France, where he rejoined the queen. 

There had been a council, in his absence, of the lords 
md the authorities of London. When the prince came, 
pn the day after the king's departure, he summoned the" 
lords to meet him, and soon afterwards, all those who had 
served in any of the parliaments of King . Charles the 
Second. It was finally resolved by these authorities that 
;;he throne was vacant by the conduct of King James 
"he Second ; that it was inconsistent with the safety and 
welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a 
popish prince ; that the Prince and Princess of Orange 
should be king and queen during their lives and the life of 
the survivor of them ; and that their children should suc- 
ceed them, if they had any. That if they had none, the 
Princess Anne and her children should succeed ; that if 
jshe had none, the heirs of the Prince of Orange should 
jsucceed. 

On the 13th of January, 1689, the prince and princess, 
sitting on a throne in Whitehall, bound themselves to 
these conditions. The Protestant religion was established 
n England, and England's great and glorious revolution 
was complete. 



406 A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

CONCLUSION. 

I have now arrived at the close of my little history. 
The events which succeeded the famous revolution of 1688 
would neither be easily related nor easily understood in 
such a book as this. 

William and Mary reigned together five years. After 
the death of his good wife, William occupied the throne 
alone for seven years longer. During his reign, on the | 
16th of September, 1701, the poor weak creature who had 
once been James the Second of England, died in France. j 
In the mean time he had done his utmost (which was not 
much) to cause William to be assassinated, and to regain ! 
his lost dominions. James's son was declared, by the 
French king, the rightful 'King of England ; and was 
called in France The Chevalier Saint George, and in 
England The Pretender. Some infatuated people in 
England, and particularly in Scotland, took up the Pre- 
tender's cause from time to time, — as if the country had 
not had Stuarts enough ! and many lives were sacrificed, 
and much misery was occasioned. King William died on 
Sunday, the 7th of March, 1702, of the consequences of an 
accident occasioned by his horse stumbling with him. He 
was always a brave, patriotic prince, and a man of remark- 
able abilities. His manner was cold, and he made but few 
friends ; but he had truly loved his queen. When he was 
dead, a lock of her hair in a ring was found tied with a 
black ribbon round his left arm. 

He was succeeded by the Princess Anne, a popular 
queen, who reigned twelve years. In her reign, in the 
month of May, 1707, the union between England and 
Scotland was effected, and the two countries were incorpo- 
rated under the name of Great Britain. Then, from the 
year 1714 to the year 1830, reigned the four Georges. 



CONCLUSION. 407 

It was in the reign of George the Second, 1745, that the 
Pretender did his last mischief, and made his last appear- 
ance. Being an old man by that time, he and the Jaco- 
bites — as his friends were called — put forward his son, 
Charles Edward, known as the Young Chevalier. The 
Highlanders of Scotland, aji extremely troublesome and 
wrong-headed race on the subject of the Stuarts, espoused 
his cause, and he joined them; and there was a Scottish 
rebellion to make him king, in which many gallant and 
devoted gentlemen lost their lives. It was a hard matter 
for Charles Edward to escape abroad again, with a high 
price on his head ; but the Scottish people were extraordi- 
narily faithful to him, and, after undergoing many romantic 
adventures, not unlike those of Charles the Second, he 
escaped to France. A number of charming stories and 
delightful songs arose out of the Jacobite feelings, and 
belong to the Jacobite times. Otherwise I think the 
Stuarts were a public nuisance altogether. 

It was in the reign of George the Third that England 
lost North America, by persisting in taxing her without 
her own consent. That immense country, made independ- 
ent under Washington, and left to itself, became the 
United States, one of the greatest nations of the earth. 
In these times in which I write, it is honorably remarkable 
for protecting its subjects, wherever they may travel, with 
a dignity and a determination which is a model for Eng- 
land. Between you and me, England has rather lost 
ground in this respect since the days of Oliver Cromwell. 

The union of Great Britain with Ireland — which had 
been getting on very ill by itself — took place in the 
reign of George the Third, on the 2d of July, 1788. 

William the Eourth succeeded George the Fourth, 
in the year 1830, and reigned seven years. Queen Vic- 
toria, his niece, the only child of the Duke of Kent, the 
fourth son of George the Third, came to the throne on the 
20th of June, 1837. She was married to Prince Albert 
of Saxe Gotha on the lOfli of February, 1840. She is 
very good, and much beloved. So I end, like the crier, 
with 

God Save the Queen! 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

4Q9 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

IN FOUR PARTS. 



PART I. 



INTRODUCTORY ROMANCE FROM THE PEN OP WILLIAM TINKLING, 
ESQUIRE.* 

This beginning-part is noT made out of anybody's head, 
you know. It's real. You must believe this beginning-part 
more than what comes after, else you won't understand how 
what comes after came to be written. You must believe it 
all ; but you must believe this most, please. I am the editor 
of it. Bob Redforth (he's my cousin, and shaking the table 
on purpose) wanted to be the editor of it ; but I *said he 
shouldn't because he couldn't. He has no idea of being an 
editor. 

Nettie Ashford is my bride. We were married in the 
right-hand closet in the corner of the dancing-school, 
where first we met, with a ring (a green one) from Wilk- 
ingwater's toy-shop. I owed for it out of my pocket- 
money. When the rapturous ceremony was over, we all 
four went up the lane and let off a cannon (brought loaded 
in Bob Redforth's waistcoat-pocket) to announce our nup- 
tials. It flew right up when it went off, and turned over. 
Next day, Lieut.-Col. Robin Redforth was united, with 
similar ceremonies, to Alice Rainbird. This time, the can- 
non burst with a most terrific explosion, and made a puppy 
bark. 

My peerless bride was, at the period of which we now 
treat, in captivity at Miss Grimmer's. Drowvey and Grim- 
mer is the partnership, and opinion is divided which is the 
greatest beast. The lovely bride of the colonel was also 

* Aged eight. 

411 



412 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

immured in the dungeons of the same establishment. A 
vow was entered into, between the colonel and myself, that 
we would cut them out on the following Wednesday when 
walking two and two. 

Under the desperate circumstances of the case, the active 
brain of the colonel, combining with his lawless pursuit (lie 
is a pirate), suggested an attack with fireworks. This, how- 
ever, from motives of humanity, was abandoned as too ex- 
pensive. 

Lightly armed with a paper-knife buttoned up under his 
jacket, and waving the dreaded black flag at the end of a 
cane, the colonel took command of me at two, p.m., on the 
eventful and appointed day. He had drawn out the plan 
of attack on a piece of paper, which was rolled up round a 
hoop-stick. He showed it to me. My position and my full- 
length portrait (but my real ears don't stick out horizontal) 
was behind a corner lamp-post^vith written orders to remain 
there till I should see Miss Drowvey fall. The Drowvey 
who was to fall was the one in spectacles, not the one with 
the large lavender bonnet. At that signal, I was to rush 
forth, seize my bride, and fight my way to the lane. There 
a junction would be effected between myself and the colonel ; 
and putting our brides behind us, between ourselves and the 
palings, we were to conquer or die. 

The enemy appeared, — approached. Waving his black 
flag, the colonel attacked. Confusion ensued. Anxiously I 
awaited my signal ; but my signal came not. So far from 
falling, the hated Drowvey in spectacles appeared to me to 
have muffled 'the colonel's head in his outlawed banner, and 
to be pitching into him with a parasol. The one in the lav- 
ender bonnet also performed prodigies of valor with her fists 
on his back. Seeing that all was for the moment lost, I 
fought my desperate way hand-to-hand to the lane. . Through 
taking the back road, I was so fortunate as to meet nobody, 
and arrived there uninterrupted. 

It seemed an age ere the colonel joined me. He had 
been to the jobbing-tailor's to be sewn up in several places, 
and attributed our defeat to the refusal of the detested 
Drowvey to fall. Finding her so obstinate, he had said to 
her, " Die recreant !" but had found her no more open to 
reason on that point than the other. 

My blooming bride appeared, accompanied by the colonel's 
bride, at the dancing-school next day. What ? Was her 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 413 

face averted from me ? Hah ? Even so. With a look of 
scorn she put into my hand a bit of paper, and took another 
partner. On the paper was pencilled, " Heavens ! Can I 
I write the word ? Is my husband a cow ? " 

In the first bewilderment of my heated brain, I tried to 
think what slanderer could "have traced my family to the 
ignoble animal mentioned above. Vain were my endeavors. 
At the end of that dance I whispered the colonel to come 
into the cloak-room, and I showed him the note. 

" There is a syllable wanting," said he, with a gloomy 
brow. 

" Hah ! What syllable ? " was my inquiry. 

"She asks, can she write the word? And no; you see 
she couldn't," said the colonel, pointing out the passage. 

" And the word was ? " said I. 

" Cow — cow — coward," hissed the pirate-colonel in my 
ear, ami gave me back the note. 

Feeling that I must forever tread the earth a branded 
boy, — person I mean, - — or that I must clear up my honor, 
"I demanded to be tried by a court-martial. The colonel 
admitted my right to be tried. Some difficulty was found 
in composing the court, on account of the Emperor of 
France's aunt refusing to let him come out. " He was to be 
the president. Ere yet we had appointed a substitute, he 
made his escape over the back-wall, and stood among us, a . 
free monarch. 

The court was held on the grass by the pond. I recog- 
nized, in a certain admiral among my judges, my deadliest 
foe. A cocoa-nut had given rise to language that I could 
not brook; but confiding in my innocence, and also in the 
knowledge that the President of the United States (who 
sat next him) owed me a knife, I braced myself for the 
ordeal. 

It was a solemn spectacle, that court. Two executioners 
with pinafores reversed led me in. Under the shade of an 
umbrella I perceived my bride, supported by the bride - of the 
pirate-colonel. The president, having reproved a little 
female ensign for tittering, on a matter of life or death, 
called upon me to plead, " Coward or no coward, guilty or 
not guilty?" I pleaded in a firm tone, "No coward and 
not guilty. ' (The little female"ensign being again reproved 
by the president for misconduct, mutinied, left the court, 
and threw stones.) 



414 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

My implacable enemy, the admiral, conducted the case 
against me. The colonel's bride was called to prove that I 
had remained behind the corner lamp-post during the en- 
gagement. I might have been spared the anguish of my' 
own bride's being also made a witness to the same point, 
but the admiral knew where to wound me. Be still, my 
soul, no matter. The colonel was then brought forward 
with his evidence. 

It was for this point that I had saved myself up, as the 
turning-point of my case. Shaking myself free of my 
guards, — who had no business to hold me, the stupids, 
unless I was found guilty, — I asked the colonel what he 
considered the first duty of a soldier? Ere he could reply, 
the President of the United States rose and informed the 
court, that my foe, the admiral, had suggested " Bravery," 
and that prompting a witness wasn't fair. The president 
of the court immediately ordered the admiral's mouth to be 
filled with leaves, and tied up with string. I had the satis- 
faction of seeing the sentence carried into effect before the 
proceedings went further. 

I then took a paper from my trousers-pocket, and asked, 
" What do you consider, Col. Bedford, the first duty of a 
soldier ? Is it obedience ? " 

" It is," said the colonel. 

" Is that paper — please to look at it — in your hand ? " 

" It is," said the colonel. 

" Is it a military sketch ? " 

" It is," said the colonel. 

" Of an engagement ? " 

" Quite so," said the colonel. 

" Of the late engagement ? " 

" Of the late engagement." 

" Please to describe it, and then hand it to the president 
of the court." 

From that triumphant moment my sufferings and my 
dangers were at an end. The court rose up and jumped, on 
discovering that I had strictly obeyed orders. My foe, the 
admiral, who though muzzled was malignant yet, contrived 
to suggest that I was dishonored by having quitted the 
field. But the colonel himself had done as much, and 
gave his opinion, upon his word and honor as a pirate, that 
when all was lost the field might be quitted without dis- 
grace. I was going to be found "No coward and no* 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 415 

guilty," and my blooming bride was going to be publicly 
restored to my arms in a procession, when an unlooked-for 
event disturbed the general rejoicing. This was no other 
than the Emperor of France's aunt catching hold of his 
hair. The proceedings abruptly terminated, and the court 
tumultuously dissolved. 

It was when the shades of the next evening but one were 
beginning to fall, ere yet the silver beams of Luna touched 
the earth, that four forms might have been descried slowly 
advancing towards the weeping willow on the borders of the 
pond, the now deserted scene of the day before yesterday's 
agonies and triumphs. On a nearer approach, and by a 
practised eye, these might have been identified as the forms 
of the pirate-colonel with his bride, and of the day before 
yesterday's gallant prisoner with his bride. 

On the beauteous faces of the Nymphs dejection sat en- 
thronedV All four reclined under the willow for some min- 
utes without speaking, till at length the bride of the colonel 
poutingly observed, " It's of no use pretending any more, 
and we had better give it up." 

" Hah ! " exclaimed the pirate. " Pretending ? " 

" Don't go on like that ; you worry me," returned his 
bride. * 

The lovely bride of Tinkling echoed the ineredible dec- 
laration. The two warriors exchanged stony glances. 

" If," said the bride of the pirate-colonel, " grown up 
people won't do what they ought to* do, and will put us 
out, what comes of our pretending ? " 

" We only get into scrapes," said the bride of Tinkling. 

" You know very well," pursued the colonel's bride, " that 
Miss Drowvey wouldn't fall. You complained of it your- 
self. And you know how disgracefully the court-martial 
ended. As to our marriage ; would my people acknowl- 
edge it at home ? " 

" Or would my people acknowledge ours ? " said the 
bride of Tinkling. 

Again the two warriors exchanged stony glances. 

"If you knocked at the door and claimed me, after you 
were told to go away," said the colonel's bride, " you would 
only have your hair pulled, or your ears, or your nose." 

"If you persisted in ringing at the bell and claiming 
me," said the bride of Tinkling to that gentleman, " you 
would have things dropped on your head from the window 

35* 



416 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

over the handle, or you would he played upon hy the 
garden-engine." 

"And at your own homes," resumed the hride of the 
colonel, " it would he just as had. You would he sent to 
bed, or something equally undignified. Again, how would 
you support us ? " 

The pirate-colonel replied in a courageous voice, "By 
rapine ! " But his bride retorted, " Suppose the grown-up 
people wouldn't be rapined ? " " Then," said the colonel, 
" they should pay the penalty in blood." — " But suppose 
they should object," retorteti his bride, " and wouldn't pay 
the penalty in blood or any thing else ? " 

A mournful silence ensued. 

" Then do you no longer love me, Alice ? " asked the 
colonel. 

" Eedforth ! I am ever thine," returned his bride. 

" Then do you no longer love me, Nettie ? " asked the 
present writer. 

" Tinkling ! I am ever thine," returned my bride. 

We all four embraced. Let me not be misunderstood 
by the giddy. The colonel embraced his own bride, and I 
embraced mine. But two times two make four. 

"Nettie and I," said Alice mournfully, "have been con- 
sidering our position. The grown-up people are too strong 
for us. They make us ridiculous. Besides, they have 
changed the times. William Tinkling's baby brother was 
christened yesterday, i What took place ? Was any king 
present ? Answer, William." 

I said No, unless disguised as Great-uncle Chopper. 

" Any queen ? " 

There had been no queen that I knew of at our house. 
There might have been one in the kitchen ; but I didn't 
think so, or the servants would have mentioned it. 

" Any fairies ? " 

None that were visible. 

" We had an idea among us, I think," said Alice, with a 
melancholy smile, "we four, that Miss Grimmer would 
prove to be the wicked fairy, and would come in at the 
christening with her crutch-stick, and give the child a 
bad gift. Was there any thing of that sort? Answer, 
William." 

I said that ma had said afterwards (and so she had), 
that Great-uncle Chopper's gift was a shabby one ; but she 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 417 

hadn't said a bad one. She *had called it shabby, electro- 
typed, second-hand, and below his income. 

"It must be the grown-up people who have changed all 
this," said Alice. " We couldn't have changed it, if we 
had been so inclined, and we never should have been. Or 
perhaps Miss Grimmer is a wicked fairy after all, and 
won't act up to it because the grown-up people have per- 
suaded her not to. Either way, they would make us ridicu- 
lous if we told them what we expected." 

" Tyrants ! " muttered the pirate-colonel. 

"Nay, my Redforth," said Alice, "say not so. Call not 
names, my Redforth, or they will apply to pa." 

"Let 'em!" said the colonel. "I don't care. Who's 
he?" 

Tinkling here undertook the perilous task of remon- 
strating with his lawless friend, who consented to with- 
draw the moody expressions above quoted. 

"WhaE remains for us to do?" Alice went on in her 
mild, wise way. " We must educate, we must pretend in a 
new manner, we must wait." 

The colonel clenched his teeth, — four out in front, and 
a piece of another, and he had been twice dragged to the 
door of a dentist-despot, but had escaped from his guards. 
"How educate? How pretend in a new manner? How 
wait?" 

"Educate the grown-up people," replied Alice. "We 
part to-night. Yes, Redforth," — for the colonel tucked 
up his cuffs, — " part to-night ! Let us in these next 
holidays, now going to begin, throw our thoughts into 
something educational for the grown-up people, hinting to 
them how things ought to be. Let us veil our meaning 
under a mask of romance ; you, I, and Nettie. William 
Tinkling being the plainest and quickest writer, shall copy 
out. Is it agreed ? " 

The colonel answered sulkily, " I don't mind." He then 
asked, " How about pretending ? " 

" We will pretend," said Alice, " that we are children ; 
not that we are those grown-up people who won't help us 
out as they ought, and who understand us so badty." 

The colonel, still much dissatisfied, growled, "How 
about Waiting ? " 

" We will wait," answered little Alice, taking Nettie's 
hand in hers, and looking up to the sky, " we will wait — 



418 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

ever constant and true — till the times have got so changed 
as that every thing helps us out, and nothing makes us 
ridiculous, and the fairies have come back. We will wait 
— ever constant and true — till we are eighty, ninety, or 
one hundred. And then the fairies will send us children, 
and we will help them out, poor pretty little creatures, if 
they pretend ever so much." 

"So we will, dear," said Nettie Ashford, taking her 
round the waist with both arms, and kissing her. " And 
now if my husband will go and buy some cherries for us, I 
have got some money." • 

In the friendliest manner I invited the colonel to go 
with me ; but he so far forgot himself as to acknowledge the 
invitation by kicking out behind, and then lying down on 
his stomach on the grass, pulling it up and chewing it. 
When I came back, however, Alice had nearly brought 
him out of his vexation, and was soothing him by telling 
him how soon we should all be ninety. 

As we sat under the willow-tree, and ate the cherries 
(fair, for Alice shared them out), we played at being ninety. 
Nettie complained that she had a bone in her old back, 
and it made her hobble; and Alice sang a song in an 
old woman's way, but it was very pretty, and we were all 
merry. At least, I don't know about merry exactly, but 
all comfortable. 

There was a most tremendous lot of cherries ; and Alice 
always had with her some neat little bag or box or case, to 
hold things. In it that night was a tiny wine-glass. So 
Alice and Nettie said they would make some cherry-wine 
to drink our love at parting. 

Each of us had a glassful, and it was delicious ; and each 
of us drank the toast, " Our love at parting." The colonel 
drank his wine last; and it got into my head directly that 
it got into his directly. Anyhow, his eyes rolled immedi- 
ately after he had turned the glass upside down ; and he took 
me on one side, and proposed in a hoarse whisper, that we 
should "Cut 'em out still." 

" How did he mean ? " I asked my lawless friend. 

" Cut our brides out," said the colonel, " and then cut 
our way, without going down a single turning, bang to 
the Spanish main ! " 

We might have tried it, though I didn't think it would 
answer; onlv we looked round and saw that there was 






HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 419 

nothing but moonlight under the willow-tree, and that 
our pretty, pretty wives were gone. We burst out crying. 
The colonel gave in second, and came to first; but he 'gave 
in strong. 

We were ashamed of our red eyes, and hung about for 
half an hour to whiten them. Likewise a piece of chalk 
round the rims, I doing the colonel's, and he mine, but 
afterwards found in the bedroom looking-glass not natural, 
besides inflammation. Our cqnversation turned on being 
ninety. The colonel told me he had a pair of boots that 
wanted soling and heeling ; but he thought it hardly worth 
while to mention it to his father, as he himself should so 
soon be ninety, when he thought shoes would be more con- 
venient. The colonel also told me, with his hand upon his 
hip, that he felt himself already getting on in life, and turn- 
ing rheumatic. And I told him the same. And when they 
said at our house at supper (they are always bothering 
about something) that I stooped, I felt so glad ! 

This is the end of the beginning-part that you were to 
believe most. 



PART II. 

* 

ROMANCE. FROM THE PEN OP MISS ALICE RAINBIRD.* 

There was once a king, and he had a queen ; and he was 
the manliest of his sex, and she was the loveliest of hers. 
The king was, in hie private profession, under government. 
The queen's father had been a medical man out of town. 

They had nineteen children, and were always having 
more. . Seventeen of these children took care of the baby ; 
and Alicia, the eldest, took care of them all. Their ages 
varied from seven years to seven months. 

Let us now resume our story. 

One day the king was going to the office, when he 
stopped at the fishmonger's to buy a pound and a half of 
salmon not too near the tail, which the queen (who was a 
careful housekeeper), had requested him to send home. 
Mr. Pickles, the fishmonger, said, "Certainly, sir, is there 
any other article ? good-morning." 

* Aged seven. 



420 HOLIDAY EOMANCE, 

The king went on towards the office in a melancholy 
mood ; for quarter-day was such a long way off, and several 
of the dear children were growing out of their clothes. 
He had not proceeded far, when Mr. Pickles's errand-boy 
came running after him, and said, " Sir, you didn't notice 
the old lady in our shop." 
• "What old lady ?" inquired the king. " I saw none." 

Now, the king had not seen any old lady, because this 
old lady had been invisible to him, though visible to Mr. 
Pickles's boy. Probably because he messed and splashed 
the water about to that degree, and flopped the pairs of 
soles down in that violent manner, that, if she had not 
been visible to him, he would have spoilt her clothes. 

Just then the old lady came trotting up. She was 
dressed in shot-silk of the richest quality, smelling of dried 
lavender. 

"King Watkins the First, I believe?" said the old lady. 

" Watkins," replied the king, " is my name." 

"Papa, if I am not mistaken, of the beautiful Princess 
Alicia ? " said the old lady. 

"And of eighteen other darlings," replied the king. 

"Listen. You are going to the office," said the old lady. 

It instantly flashed upon the king that she must be a 
fairy, or how could she know that ? 

" You are right," said the old lady, answering his thoughts. 
"I am the good Fairy Grandmarina. Attend! When you 
return home to dinner, politely invite the Princess Alicia to 
have some of the salmon you bought just now." 

" It may disagree with her," said the king. 

The old lady became so very angry at this absurd idea, 
that the king was quite alarmed, and humbly begged her 
pardon. 

" We hear a great deal too much about this thing dis- 
agreeing, and that thing disagreeing," said the old lady, 
with the greatest contempt it was possible to express. 
" Don't be greedy. I think you want it all yourself." 

The king hung his head under this reproof, and said he 
wouldn't talk about things disagreeing any more. 

"Be good, then," said the Fairy Grandmarina, "and 
don't ! When the beautiful Princess Alicia consents to par- 
take of the salmon, — as I think she will, — you will find 
she will leave a fish-bone on her plate. Tell her to dry it, 
afid to rub it, and to polish it till it shines like mother-of- 
pearl, and to take care of it as a present from me." 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 421 

" Is that all ? " asked the king. 

" Don't be impatient, sir," returned the Fairy Grand- 
marina, scolding him severely. " Don't catch people short, 
before they have done speaking. Just the way with you 
grown-up persons. You are always doing it." 

The king again hung his head, and said he wouldn't do 
so any more. 

" Be good, then," said the Fairy Grandmarina, " and 
don't ! Tell the Princess Alicia, with my love, that the 
fish-bone is a magic present which can only be used once ; 
but that it will .bring her, that once, whatever she wishes 

for, PROVIDED SHE WISHES FOR IT AT THE EIGHT TIME. 

That is the message. Take care of it." 

The king was beginning, " Might I ask the reason ? " 
when the fairy became absolutely furious. 

" Will you be good, sir ? " she exclaimed, stamping her 
foot on the ground. " The reason for this, and the reason 
for that,""* indeed ! You are always wanting the reason. 
No reason. There ! Hoity toity me ! I am sick of your 
grown-up reasons." 

The king was extremely frightened by the old lady's 
flying into such a passion, and said he was very sorry to 
have offended her, and he wouldn't ask for reasons any 
more. 

•• Be good, then," said the old lady, " and don't ! " 

With those words, Grandmarina vanished, and the king 
went- on and on and on, till he came to the office. There he 
wrote and wrote and wrot&, till it was time to go home 
again. Then he politely invited the Princess Alicia, as the 
fairy had directed him, to partake of the salmon. And 
when she had enjoyed it very much, he saw the fish-bone on 
her plate, as the fairy had told him he would, and he deliv- 
ered the fairy's message, and the Princess Alicia took care 
to dry the bone, and to rub it, and to polish it till it shone 
like mother-of-pearl. 

And so, when the queen was going to get up in the 
morning, she said, " Oh, dear me, dear me ; my head, my 
head ! " and then she fainted away. 

The Princess Alicia, who happened to be looking in at 
the chamber-door, asking about breakfast, was very much 
alarmed when she saw her royal mamma in this state, and 
she rang the bell for Peggy, which was the name of the 
lord chamberlain. .But remembering where the smelling- 

3.6 



422 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

bottle was, she climbed on a chair and got it ; and after that 
she climbed on another chair by the bedside, and held the 
smelling-bottle to the queen's nose ; and after that she 
jumped down and got some water; and after that she jumped 
up again and wetted the queen's forehead ; and, in short, 
when the lord chamberlain came in, that dear old woman 
said to the little princess, " What a trot you are ! I couldn't 
have done it better myself! " 

But that was not the worst of the good queen's illness. 
Oh, no ! She was very ill indeed, for a long time. The Prin- 
cess Alicia kept the seventeen young princes and princesses 
quiet, and dressed and undressed and danced the baby, and 
made the kettle boil, and heated the soup, and swept the 
hearth, and poured out the medicine, and nursed the queen, 
and did all that ever she could, and was as busy, busy, busy 
as busy could be ; for there were not many servants at 
that palace for three reasons : because the king was short 
of money, because a rise in his office never seemed to come, 
and because quarter-day was so far off that it looked almost 
as far off and as little as one of the stars. 

But on the morning when. the queen fainted away, where 
was the magic fish-bone ? Why, there it was in the Prin- 
cess Alicia's pocket ! She had almost taken it out to bring 
the queen to life again, when she put it back, and looked 
for the smelling-bottle. 

After the queen had come out of her swoon that morning, 
and was dozing, the Princess Alicia hurried up stairs to tell 
a most particular secret to a most particularly confidential 
friend of hers, who was a duchess. People did suppose her 
to be a doll ; but she was really a duchess, though nobody 
knew it except the princess. 

This most particular secret was the secret about the magic 
fish-bone, the history of which was well known to the 
duchess, because the princess told her every thing. The 
princess kneeled down by the bed on which the duchess was 
lying, full-dressed and wide-awake, and whispered the secret 
to her. The duchess smiled and nodded. People might 
have supposed that she never smiled and nodded ; but she 
often did, though nobody knew it except the princess. 

Then the Princess Alicia hurried down stairs again, to 
keep watch in the queen's room. She often kept watch by 
herself in the queen's room; but every evening, while the 
illness lasted, she sat there watching with the king. And 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 423 

every evening the king sat looking at her with a cross look, 
wondering why she never brought out the magic fish-bone. 
As often as she noticed this, she ran up stairs, whispered 
the secret to the duchess over again, and said to the duchess 
besides, " They think we children never have a reason or a 
meaning ! " And the duchess, though the most fashionable 
duchess that ever was heard of, winked her eye. 

"Alicia," said the king, one evening, when she wished 
him good-night. 

"Yes, papa." • 

" What is become of the magic fish-bone ? " 

" In my pocket, papa ! " 

" I thought you had lost it ? " 

" Oh, no, papa ! n 

" Or forgotten it ? " 

"No, indeed, papa." 

And so another time the dreadful little snapping pup-dog, 
next do«r, made a rush at one of the young princes as he 
stood on the steps coming home from school, and terrified 
him out of his wits ; and he put his hand through a pane of 
glass, and bled, bled, bled. When the seventeen other young 
princes and princesses saw him bleed, bleed, bleed, they were 
terrified out of their wits too, and screamed themselves 
black in their seventeen faces all at once. But the Princess 
Alicia put her hands over all their seventeen mouths, one 
after another, and persuaded them to be quiet because of 
the sick queen. And then she put the wounded prince's 
hand in a basin of fresh cold water, while th,ey stared with 
their twice seventeen are thirty-four, put down four and 
carry three, eyes, and then she looked in the hand for bits 
of glass, and there were fortunately no bits of glass there. 
And then she said to two chubby-legged princes, who were 
sturdy though small, " Bring me in the royal rag-bag : I 
must snip and stitch and cut and contrive." So these two 
young princes tugged at the royal rag-bag, and lugged it in ; 
and the Princess Alicia sat down on the floor, with a large 
pair of scissors and a needle and thread, and snipped and 
stitched and cut and contrived, and made a bandage, and 
put it on, and it fitted beautifully ; and so when it was all 
done, she saw the king her papa looking on by the door. 

"Alicia." 

"Yes, papa." 

" What have you been doing ? " 



424 . HOLIDAY KOMANCE. 

" Snipping, stitching, cutting, and contriving, papa." 

" Where is the magic fish-bone ? " 

" In my pocket, papa." 

" I thought you had lost it ? " 
- " Oh, no, papa ! " 

" Or forgotten it ? " 

"N"o, indeed, papa." 

After that, she ran up stairs to the duchess, and told her 
what had passed, and told her the secret over again ; and 
the duchess shook her* flaxen curls, and laughed with her 
rosy lips. 

Well ! and so another time the baby fell under the grate. 
The seventeen young princes and princesses were used to it ; 
for they were almost always falling under the grate or down 
the stairs : but the baby was not used to it yet, and it gave 
him a swelled face and a black eye. The way the poor 
little darling came to tumble was, that he was out of the- 
Princess Alicia's lap just as she was sitting, in a great 
coarse apron that quite smothered her, in front of the 
kitchen-fire, beginning to peel the turnips for the broth for 
dinner ; and the way she came to be doing that was, that 
the king's cook had run away that morning with her own 
true love, who was a very tall but very tipsy soldier. Then 
the seventeen young princes and princesses, who cried at 
every -thing that happened, cried and roared. But the 
Princess Alicia (who couldn't help crying a little herself) 
quietly called to them to be still, on account of not throwing 
back the queqn up stairs, who was fast getting well, and 
said, " Hold your tongues, you wicked little monkeys, every 
one of you, while I examine baby ! " Then she examined 
baby, and found that he hadn't broken any thing; and she 
held cold iron to his poor dear eye, and smoothed his poor 
dear face, and he presently fell asleep in her arms. Then 
she said to the seventeen princes and princesses, -"I am 
afraid to let him down yet, lest he should wake and feel 
pain ; be good, and you shall all be cooks." They jumped 
for joy when they heard that, and began making themselves 
cooks' caps out of old newspapers. So to one she gave the 
salt-box, and to one she gave the barley, and to one she 
gave the herbs, and to one she gave the turnips, and to one 
she gave the carrots, and to one she gave the onions, and to 
one she gave the spice-box, till they were all cooks, and all 
running about at work, she sitting in the middle, smoth- 




THE PRINCESS ALICIA. 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 425 

ered in the great coarse apron, nursing baby. By and by 
the broth was done ; and the baby woke up, smiling like 
an angel, and was trusted to the sedatest princess to hold, 
while the other princes and princesses were squeezed into 
a far-off corner to look at the Princess Alicia turning out 
the saucepanful of broth, for fear (as they were always 
getting into trouble) they should get splashed and scalded. 
When the broth came tumbling out, steaming beautifully, 
and smelling like a nosegay good to eat, they clapped their 
hands. That made the baby clap his hands ; and that, and 
his looking as if he had a comic toothache, made all the 
princes and princesses laugh. So the Princess Alicia said, 
" Laugh and be good ; and after dinner we will make him a 
nest on the floor in a corner, and he shall^sit in his nest and 
see a dance of eighteen cooks." That delighted the young 
princes and princesses, and they ate up all the broth, and 
washed up all the plates and dishes, and cleared away, and 
pushed the table into a corner ; and then they in their cooks' 
caps, and the Princess Alicia in the smothering coarse apron 
that belonged to the cook that had run away with her own 
true love that was the very tall but very tipsy soldier, 
danced a dance of eighteen cooks before the angelic baby, 
who forgot his swelled face and his black eye, and crowed 
with joy. 

And so then, once more the Princess Alicia saw King 
Watkins the First,- her father, standing in the doorway 
looking on, and he said, "What have you been doing, 
Alicia?" 

" Cooking and contriving, papa." 

"What else have you been doing, Alicia?" 

" Keeping the children light-hearted, papa." 

" Where is the magic fish-bone, Alicia ? " 

" In my pocket, papa." 

" I thought you had lost it ? " 

" Oh, no, papa ! " 

"Or forgotten it?" 

"No, indeed, papa." 

The king then sighed so heavily, and seemed so low- 
spirited, and sat down so miserably, leaning his head upon 
his hand, and his elbow upon the kitchen-table pushed 
away in the corner, that the seventeen princes and prin- 
cesses crept softly out of the kitchen, and left hiru alone 
with the Princess Alicia and the angelic baby. 

36* 



426 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

" What is the matter, papa ? " 

" I am dreadfully poor, my child." 

" Have you no money at all, papa? " 

" None, my child." 

" Is there no way of getting any, papa? " 

" No way," said the king. " I have tried very hard, and 
I have tried all ways." 

When she heard those last words, the Princess Alicia 
began to put her hand into the pocket where she kept the 
magic fish-bone. 

" Papa," said she, " when we have tried very hard, and 
tried all ways, we must have done our very, very best ? " 

"No doubt, Alicia." 

" When we have done our very, very best, papa, and that 
is not enough, then I think the right time must have come 
for asking help of others." This was the very secret con- 
nected with the magic fish-bone, which she had found out 
for herself from the good Fairy Grandmarina's words, and 
which she had so often whispered to her beautiful and 
fashionable friend, the duchess. 

So she took out of her pocket the magic fish-bone that 
had been dried and rubbed and polished till it shone like 
mother-of-pearl ; and she gave it one little kiss, and wished 
it was quarter-day. And immediately it was quarter-day ; 
and the king's quarter's salary came rattling down the 
chimney, and bounced into the middle of the floor. . 

But this was not half of what happened, — no, not a 
quarter ; for immediately afterwards the good Fairy Grand- 
marina came riding in, in a carriage and four (peacocks), 
with Mr. Pickles's boy up behind, dressed in silver and 
gold, with a cocked-hat, powdered hair, pink silk stockings, 
a jewelled cane, and a nosegay. Down jumped Mr. Pick- 
les's boy, with his cocked-hat in his hand, and wonderful- 
ly polite (being entirely changed by enchantment), and 
handed Grandmarina out ; and there she stood, in her rich 
shot-silk smelling of dried lavender, fanning herself with a 
sparkling fan. 

" Alicia, my dear," said this charming old fairy, " how 
do you do ? I hope I see you pretty well ? Give me a kiss." 

The Princess Alicia embraced her; and then Grand- 
marina turned to the king, and said rather sharply, " Are 
you good ? " 

The king said he hoped so. 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 427 

" I suppose you know the reason now, why my god- 
daughter here/' kissing the princess again, "did not 
apply to the fish-bone sooner ? " said the fairy. 

The king made a shy bow. 

" Ah ! but you didn't then ? " said the fairy. 

The king made a shyer bow. 

" Any more reasons to ask for ? " said the fairy. 

The king said, No, and he was very sorry. 

"Be good, then," said the fairy, "and live happy ever 
afterwards." 

Then Grandmarina waved her fan, and the queen came 
in most splendidly dressed; and the seventeen young 
princes and princesses, no longer grown out of their clothes, 
came in, newly fitted out from top to toe, with tucks in 
every thing to admit of its being let out. After that, 
the fairy tapped the Princess Alicia with her fan ; and 
the smothering coarse apron flew away, and she appeared 
exquisitely dressed, like a little bride, with a wreath of 
orange-flowers and a silver veil. After that, the kitchen 
dresser changed of itself into a wardrobe, made of beautiful 
woods and gold and looking glass, which was full of dresses 
of all sorts, all for her and all exactly fitting her. After 
that, the angelic baby came in, running alone, with his face 
and eye not a bit the worse, but much the better. Then 
Grandmarina begged to be introduced to the duchess ; and, 
when the duchess was brought down, many compliments 
passed between them. 

A little whispering took place between the fairy and the 
duchess ; and then the fairy said out loud, " Yes, I thought 
she would have told you." Grandmarina then turned to 
the king and queen, and said, " We are going in search of 
Prince Certainpersonio. The pleasure of your company 
is requested at church in half an hour precisely." So she 
and the Princess Alicia got into the carriage ; and Mr. 
Pickles's boy handed in the duchess, who sat by herself on 
the opposite seat ; and then Mr. Pickles's boy put up the 
steps and got up -behind, and the peacocks flew away with 
their tails behind. 

Prince Certainpersonio was sitting by himself, eating 
barlejr-sugar, and waiting to be ninety. When he saw the 
peacocks, followed by the carriage, coming in at the window, 
it immediately occurred to him that something uncommon 
was going to happen. 



428 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

"Prince," said Grandmarina, "I bring you your bride." 

The moment the fairy said those words, Prince Certain- 
personio's face left off being sticky, and his jacket and 
corduroys changed to peach-bloom velvet, and his hair 
curled, and a cap and feather flew in like a bird and settled 
on his head. He got into the carriage by the fairy's in- 
vitation ; and there he renewed his acquaintance with the 
duchess, whom he had seen before. 

In the church were the prince's relations and friends, 
and the Princess Alicia's relations and friends, and the 
seventeen princes and princesses, and the baby, and a crowd 
of the neighbors. The marriage was beautiful beyond 
expression. The duchess was bridesmaid, and beheld the 
ceremony from the pulpit, where she was supported by the 
cushion of the desk. 

Grandmarina gave a magnificent wedding-feast after- 
wards, in which there was every thing and more to eat, and 
every thing and more to drink. The wedding-cake was 
delicately ornamented with white satin ribbons, frosted 
silver, and white lilies, and was forty-two yards round. 

When Grandmarina had drunk her love to the young 
couple, and Prince Certainpersonio had made a speech, and 
everybody had cried, Hip, hip, hip, hurrah ! Grandmarina 
announced to the king and queen that in future there would 
be eight quarter-days in every year, except in leap-year, 
when there would be ten. She then turned to Certainper- 
sonio and Alicia, and said, "My dears, you will have 
thirty-five children, and they will all be good and beautiful. 
Seventeen of your children will be boys, and eighteen 
will be girls. The hair of the whole of your children will 
curl naturally. They will never have the measles, and 
will have recovered from the whooping-cough before being 
born." 

On hearing such good news, everybody cried out " Hip, 
hip, hip, hurrah ! " again. 

" It only remains," said Grandmarina in conclusion, " to 
make an end of the fish-bone." 

So she took it from the hand of the Princess Alicia, and 
it instantly flew down the throat of the dreadful little 
snapping pug-dog, next door, and chokecTTiim, and he ex- 
pired in convulsions. 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 429 

PART III. 

ROMANCE. FROM THE PEN OP LIEUT.-COL. ROBIN REDFORTH.* 

The subject of our present narrative would appear to 
have devoted himself to the pirate profession at a compa- 
ratively early age. We find him in command of a splendid 
schooner of one hundred guns loaded to the muzzle, ere 
yet he had had a party in honor of his tenth birthday. 

It seems that our hero, considering himself spited by a 
j Latin-grammar master, demanded the satisfaction due from 
jone man of honor to another. Not getting it, he private- 
ly withdrew his haughty spirit from such low company, 
bought a second-hand pocket-pistol, folded up some sand- 
iwiches in a paper bag, made a bottle of Spanish liquorice- 
[water, and entered on a career of valor. 

It were -tedious to follow Boldheart (for such was his 
jname) through the commencing stages of his story. Suffice 
jit, that we find him bearing the rank of Capt. Boldheart, 
(reclining in full uniform on a crimson hearth-rug spread 
jout upon the quarter-deck of his schooner "The Beauty," 
tin the China seas. It was a lovely evening ; and, as his crew 
jlay grouped about him, he favored them with the following 
jmelody : — ' 

'O landsmen are folly ! 
O pirates are jolly ! 
diddleum Dolly, 

bn 

Chorus. — Heave yo. 

The soothing effect of these animated sounds floating 
over the waters, as the common sailors united their rough 
voices to take up the rich tones of Boldheart, may be more 
easily conceived than described. 

It was under these circumstances that the lookout at the 
mast-head gave the word, "Whales !" 

All was now activity. 

" Where away ? " cried Capt. Boldheart, starting up. 

" On the larboard bow, sir," replied the fellow at the 
imast-head, touching his hat. For such was. the height of 
jdiscipline on board of " The Beauty," that, even at that 
height, he was obliged to mind it, or be shot through the 
jhead. 

* Aged nine. 



430 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

" This adventure belongs to me," said Boldheart. " Boy.i 
my harpoon. Let no man follow ; " and, leaping alone intc 
his boat, the captain rowed with admirable dexterity in 
the direction of the monster. 

All was now excitement. 

"He nears him!" said an elderly seaman, following the 
captain through his spy-glass. 

" He strikes him ! " said another seaman, a mere stripling,' 
but also with a spy-glass. 

" He tows him towards us ! " said another seaman, a man 
in the full vigor of life, but also with a spy-glass. 

In fact, the captain was seen approaching, with the huge | 
bulk following. We will not dwell on the deafening cries 
of " Boldheart ! Boldheart ! " with which he was received, 
when, carelessly leaping on the quarter-deck, he presented i 
his prize to his men. They afterwards made two thousand 
four hundred and seventeen pound ten and sixpence by it. 

Ordering the sails to be braced up, the captain now 
stood W.KW. "The Beauty" flew rather than floated 
over the dark blue waters. Nothing particular occurred 
for a fortnight, except taking, with considerable slaughter, 
four Spanish galleons, and a snow from South America, all 
richly laden. Inaction began to tell upon the spirits of • 
the men. Capt. Boldheart called all hands aft, and said, : 
"My lads, I hear there are discontented ones among ye. 
Let any such stand forth." 

After some murmuring, in which the expressions, " Ay, 
ay, sir! ""Union Jack," "Avast," "Starboard," "Port," 
" Bowsprit," and similar indications of a mutinous under- 
current, though subdued, were audible, Bill Boozey, captain 
of theforetop, came out from the rest. His form was that 
of a giant, but he quailed under the captain's eye. 

" What are your wrongs ? " said the captain. 

" Why, d'ye see, Capt. Boldheart," replied the towering 
mariner, " I've sailed, man and boy, for many a year, but 
I never yet know'd the milk served out for the ship's com- 
pany's teas to be so sour as 'tis aboard this craft." 

At this moment the thrilling cry, "Man overboard!" 
announced to the astonished crew that Boozey, in stepping I 
back, as the captain (in mere thoughtfulness) laid his hand 
upon the faithful pocket-pistol which he wore in his belt, 
had lost his balance, and was struggling with the foaming 
tide. 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 431 

All was now stupefaction. 

But with Capt. Boldheart, to throw off his uniform coat, 
regardless of the various rich orders with which it was 
decorated, and to plunge into the sea after the drowning 
giant, was the work of a moment. Maddening was the 
excitement when boats were lowered ; intense the joy when 
the captain was seen holding up the drowning man with 
his teeth ; deafening the cheering when both were restored 
to the main deck of " The Beauty." And, from the instant 
of his changing his wet clothes for dry ones, Capt. Bold- 
heart had no such devoted though humble friend as William 
Boozey. 

Boldheart now pointed to the horizon, and called the 
attention of his crew to the taper spars of a ship lying 
snug in harbor under the guns of a fort. 

" She shall be ours at sunrise," said he. " Serve out a 
double allowance of grog, and prepare for action. 

All was now preparation. 

When morning dawned, after a sleepless night, it was 
seen that the stranger was crowding on all sail to come out 
of the harbor and offer battle. As the two ships came 
nearer to each other, the stranger fired a gun and hoisted 
Roman colors. Boldheart then perceived her to be the 
Latin-grammar master's bark. Such indeed she was, and 
had been tacking about the world in unavailing pursuit, 
from the time of his first taking to a roving life. 

Boldheart now addressed his men, promising to blow 
them up if he should feel convinced that their reputation 
required it, and giving orders that the Latin-grammar 
master should be taken alive. He then dismissed them to 
their quarters, and the fight began with a broadside from 
" The Beauty." She then veered around, and poured in 
another. " The Scorpion " (so was the bark of the Latin- 
grammar master appropriately called) was not slow to re- 
turn her fire ; and a terrific cannonading ensued, in which 
the guns of " The Beauty " did tremendous execution. 

The Latin-grammar master was seen upon the poop, in 
the midst of the smoke and fire, encouraging his men. To 
do him justice, he was no craven, ^though his white hat, his 
short gray trousers, and his long snuff-colored surtout 
reaching to his heels (the self-same coat in which he had 
spited Boldheart), contrasted most unfavorably with the 
brilliant uniform of the latter. At this moment, Boldheart, 



432 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

seizing a pike and putting himself at the head of his men, 
gave the word to board. 

A desperate conflict ensued in the hammock-nettings, — 
or somewhere in about that direction, — until the Latin - 
grammar master, having all his masts gone, his hull and 
rigging shot through and through, and seeing Boldheart 
slashing a path towards him, hauled down his flag himself, 
gave up his sword to Boldheart, and asked for quarter. 
Scarce had he been put into the captain's boat, ere " The 
Scorpion " went down with all on board. 

On Capt. Boldheart's now assembling his men, a cir- 
cumstance occurred. He found it necessary with one blow 
of his cutlass to kill the cook, who, having lost his brother 
in the late action, was making at the Latin-grammar 
master in an infuriated state, intent on his destruction 
with a carving-knife. 

Capt. Boldheart then turned to the Latin - grammar 
master, severely reproaching him with his perfidy, and put 
it to his crew what they considered that a master who 
spited a hoy deserved. 

They answered with one voice, " Death." 

" It may be so," said the captain ; " but it shall never be 
said that Boldheart stained his hour of triumph with the 
blood of his enemy. Prepare the cutter." 

The cutter was immediately prepared. 

" Without taking your life," said the captain, " I must 
yet forever deprive you of the power of spiting other 
boys. I shall turn you adrift in this boat. You will find 
in her two oars, a compass, a bottle of rum, a small cask of 
water, a piece of pork, a bag of biscuit, and my Latin 
grammar. Go ! and spite the natives, if you can find 
any." 

Deeply conscious of this bitter sarcasm, the unhappy 
wretch was put into the cutter, and was soon left far behind. 
He made no effort to row, but was seen lying on his back 
with his -legs up, when last made out by the ship's tele- 
scopes. 

A stiff breeze now beginning to blow, Capt. Boldheart 
gave orders to keep her^S.S.W., easing her a little during 
the night by falling off a* point or two W. by W., or even 
by W.S., if she complained much. He then retired for 
the night, having in truth much need of repose. In addi- 
tion to the fatigues he had undergone,- this brave officer had 




THE PfRATE COEONET, AND HTR CAPTIVE. 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 433 

received sixteen wounds in the engagement, but had not 
mentioned it. 

In the morning a white squall came on, and was suc- 
ceeded by other squalls of various colors. It thundered 
and lightened heavily for six weeks. Hurricanes then set 
in for two months. Water-spouts and tornadoes followed. 
The oldest sailor on board — and he was a very old one — 
had never seen such weather. " The Beauty " lost all idea 
where she was, and the carpenter reported six feet two of 
water in the hold. Everybody fell senseless at the pumps 
every day. 

Provisions now ran very low. Our hero put the crew on 
short allowance, and put himself on shorter allowance than 
any man in the ship. But his spirit kept him fat. In 
this extremity, the gratitude of Boozey, the captain of the 
foretop, whom our readers may remember, was truly-affect- 
ing. Tli£ loving though lowly William repeatedly requested 
to be killed, and preserved for the captain's table. 

We now approach a change in affairs. 

One day during a gleam of sunshine, and when the 
weather had moderated, the man at the mast-head — too 
weak now to touch his hat, besides its having been blown 
away — called out, — 

" Savages ! " 

All was now expectation. 

Presently fifteen hundred canoes, each paddled by twenty 
savages, were seen advancing in excellent order. They 
were of a light green color (the savages were), and sang, 
with great energy, the following strain : — 

Choo a choo a- choo tooth. 

Muntch, muntch. Nycey ! 
Choo a choo a choo tooth. 

Muntch, muntch. Nyce ! 

As the shades of night were by this time closing in, 
these expressions were supposed to embody this simple 
people's views of the evening hymn. But it too soon 
appeared that the song was a translation of "For what we 
are going to receive," &c. 

The chief, imposingly decorated with feathers of lively 
colors, and having the majestic appearance of a fighting 
parrot, no sooner understood (he understood English per- 
fectly) that the ship was " The Beauty," Capt. Boldbeart, 

37 



434 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

than he fell upon his face on the deck, and could not he 
persuaded to rise until, the captain had lifted him up, and 
told him he wouldn't hurt him. All the rest of the savages 
also fell on their faces with marks of terror, and had also 
to be lifted up one by one. Thus the fame of the great 
Boldheart had gone before him, even among these children 
of Nature. 

Turtles and oysters were now produced in astonishing 
numbers ; and on these and yams the people made a hearty 
meal. After dinner the chief told Capt. Boldheart that 
there was better feeding up at the village, and that he 
would be glad to' take him and his officers there. Appre- 
hensive of treachery, Boldheart ordered his boat's crew to 
attend him completely armed. And well, were it for other 
commanders if their precautions — but let us not antici- 
pate. 

When the canoes arrived at the beach, the darkness of 
the night was illumined by the light of an immense fire. 
Ordering his boat's crew '(with the intrepid though illiter- 
ate William at their head) to keep close and be upon their 
guard, Boldheart bravely went on, arm in arm with the 
chief. 

But how to depict the captain's surprise when he found a 
ring of savages singing in chorus that barbarous translation 
of "For what we are going to receive," &c, which has been 
given above, and dancing hand in hand round the Latin- 
grammar master, in a hamper with his head shaved, while 
two savages floured him, before putting him to the fire to 
be cooked ! 

Boldheart now took counsel with his officers on the course 
to be adopted. In the mean time, the miserable captive 
never ceased begging pardon and imploring to be delivered. 
On the generous Boldheart's proposal, it was at length 
resolved that he should not be cooked, but should be allowed 
to remain raw, on two conditions ; namely : — 3 

1. That he should never, under any circumstances, pre- 
sume to teach any boy any thing any more. 

2. That, if taken back to England, he should pass his 
life in travelling to find out boys who wanted their exer- 
cises done, and should do their exercises for those boys for 
nothing, and never say a word about it. 

Drawing the sword from its sheath, Boldheart swore him 
to these conditions on its shining blade. The prisoner 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 435 

wept bitterly, and appeared acutely to feel the errors of his 
past career. 

.The captain then ordered his boat's crew to make ready 
for a volley, and after firing to re-load quickly. "And 
expect a score or two on ye to go head over heels," mur- 
mured William Boozey ; " for I'm a looking at ye." With 
those words, the derisive though deadly William took a 
good aim. 

"Fire!" 

The ringing voice of Boldheart was lost in the report of 
the guns and the screeching of the savages. Volley after 
volley awakened the numerous echoes. Hundreds of 
savages were killed, hundreds wounded, and thousands ran 
howling into the woods. The Latin-grammar master had 
a spare night-cap lent him, and a long tail-coat, which he 
wore hind side before. He presented a ludicrous though 
pitiablex appearance, and serve him right. 

We now find Capt. Boldheart, with this rescued wretch 
on board, standing off for other islands. At one ,of these, 
not a cannibal island, but a pork and vegetable one, he 
married (only in fun on his part) the king's daughter. 
Here he rested some time, receiving from the natives great 
quantities of precious stones, gold dust, elephants' teeth, 
and sandal wood, and getting very rich. This, too, though 
he almost every day made presents of enormous value to 
his men. 

The ship being at length as full as she could hold of all 
sorts of valuable things, Boldheart gave orders to weigh 
the anchor, and turn " The Beauty's " head towards Eng- 
land. These orders were obeyed with three cheers ; and ere 
the sun went down full many a hornpipe had been danced 
on deck by the uncouth, though agile William. 

We next find Capt. Boldheart about three leagues off 
Madeira, surveying through his spy-glass a stranger of 
suspicious appearance making sail towards him. On his 
firing a gun ahead of her to bring her to, she ran up a 
flag, which he instantly recognized as the flag from the 
mast in the back-garden at home. , 

Inferring from this, that his father had put to sea to 
seek his long-lost son, the captain sent his own boat on 
board the stranger to inquire if this was so, and, if so, 
whether his father's intentions were strictly honorable. 
The boat came back with a present of greens and fresh 



436 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

meat, and reported that the stranger was " The Family," of 
twelve hundred tons, and had not only the captain's father 
on board, but. also his mother, with the majority of his 
aunts and uncles, and all his cousins 4 It was further re- 
ported to Boldheart that the whole of these relations had 
expressed themselves in a becoming manner, and were anx- 
ious to embrace him and thank him for the glorious credit 
he had done them. Boldheart at once invited them to 
breakfast next morning on board " The Beauty," and gave 
orders for a brilliant ball that should last all day. 

It was in the course of the night that the captain dis- 
covered the hopelessness of reclaiming the Latin-grammar 
master. That thankless traitor was found out, as the two 
ships lay near each other, communicating with " The Fam- 
ily" by signals, and offering to give up Boldheart. He 
was hanged at the yard-arm the first thing in the morning, 
after having it impressively pointed out to him by Bold- 
heart that this was what spiters came to. 

The meeting between the captain and his parents was 
attended with tears. His uncles and aunts would have 
attended their meeting with tears too, but he wasn't, going 
to stand that". His cousins were very much astonished by 
the size of his ship and the discipline of his men, and 
were greatly overcome by the splendor of his uniform. He 
kindly conducted them round the vessel, and pointed out 
every thing worthy of notice. He also .fired his hundred 
guns, and found it amusing to witness their alarm. 

The entertainment surpassed every thing ever seen on 
board ship, and lasted from ten in the morning until seven 
the next morning. Only one disagreeable incident oc- 
curred. Capt. Boldheart found himself obliged to put his 
cousin Tom in irons, for being disrespectful. On the boy's 
promising amendment, however, he was humanely released, 
after a few hours' close confinement. 

Boldheart now took his mother down into the great 
cabin, and asked after the young lady with whom, it was 
well known to the world, he was in love. His mother 
replied that the object of his affections was then at school 
at Margate, for the benefit of sea-bathing (it was the 
month of September), but that she feared the young lady's 
friends were still opposed to the union. Boldheart at once 
resolved, if necessary, to bombard the town. 

Taking the command of his ship with this intention, 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 437 

and putting all but fighting men on board " The Family," 
with orders to that vessel to keep in company, Boldheart 
soon anchored in Margate Roads. Here he went ashore 
well-armed, and attended by his boat's crew (at their head 
the faithful though ferocious William), and demanded to 
see the mayor, who came out of his office. 

" Dost know the name of yon ship, mayor ? " asked Bold- 
heart fiercely. 

" No," said the mayor, rubbing his eyes, which he could 
scarce believe when he saw the goodly vessel riding at 
anchor. 

" She is named ' The Beauty/ " said the captain. 

"Hah ! " exclaimed the mayor, with a start. "And you, 
then, are Capt. Boldheart ? " 

"The same." 

A pause ensued. The mayor trembled. 

" Now,*-mayor," said the captain, " choose ! Help me to 
my bride, or be bombarded." 

The mayor begged for two hours' grace, in which to make 
inquires respecting the young lady. Boldheart accorded 
him but one ; and during that one placed William Boozey 
sentry over him, with a drawn sword, and instructions to 
accompany him wherever he went, and to run him through 
the body if he showed a sign of playing false. 

At the end of the hour the mayor re-appeared more dead 
than alive, closely waited on by Boozey more alive than 
dead. 

" Captain," said the mayor, " I have ascertained that the 
young lady is going to bathe. Even now she waits her 
turn for a machine. The tide is low, though rising. I, in 
one of our town-boats, shall not be suspected. When she 
comes forth in her bathing-dress into the shallow water 
from behind the hood of the machine, my boat shall inter- 
cept her and prevent her return. Do you the rest." 

"Mayor," returned Capt. Boldheart, "thou hast saved 
thy town." 

The captain then signalled his boat to take him off, and, 
steering her himself, ordered her crew to row towards the 
bathing-ground, and there to rest upon their oars. All 
happened as had been arranged. His lovely bride came 
forth, the mayor glided in behind her, she became confused, 
and had floated out of her depth, when, with one skilful 
touch of- the rudder and one quivering stroke from the 

37* 



438 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

boat's crew, her adoring Boldheart held her in his strong 
arms. There her shrieks of terror were changed to cries 

^ joy- 
Before "The Beauty" could get under way, the hoisting 
of all the'flags in the town and harbor, and the ringing of 
all the bells, announced to the brave Boldheart that he had 
nothing to fear. He therefore determined to be married 
on the spot, and signalled for- a clergyman and clerk, who 
came off promptly in a sailing-boat named " The Skylark." 
Another great entertainment was then given on board " The 
Beauty ? " in the midst of which the mayor was called out 
by a messenger. He returned with the news that govern- 
ment had sent down to know whether Capt. Boldheart, in 
acknowledgment of the great services he had done his 
country by being a pirate, would consent to be made a 
lieutenant-colonel. For himself he would have spurned 
the worthless boon; but his bride wished it, and he con- 
sented. 

Only one thing further happened before the good ship 
" Family " was dismissed, with rich presents to all on board. 
It is painful to record (but such is human, nature in some 
cousins) that Capt. Boldheart's unmannerly Cousin Tom 
was actually tied up to receive three dozen with a rope's 
end " for cheekiness and making game," when Capt. Bold- 
heart's lady begged for him, and he was spared. " The 
Beauty" then refitted, and the captain and his bride 
departed for the Indian Ocean to enjoy themselves for- 
evermore. 



PART IV. 

ROMANCE. FKOM THE PEN OP MISS NETTIE ASHFORD.* 

There is a country, which I will show you when I get 
into maps, where the children have every thing their own 
way. It is a most delightful country to live in. The 
grown-up people are obliged to obey the children, and are 
never allowed to sit up to supper, except on tneir birth- 
days. The children order them to make jam and jelly 

* Aged half-past six. 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 439 

and marmalade, and tarts and pies and puddings, and all 
manner of pastry. If they say they won't, they are put 
in the corner till they do. They are sometimes allowed to 
have some ; but when they have some, they generally have 
powders given them afterwards. 

One of the inhabitants of this country, a truly sweet 
young creature of the name of Mrs. Orange, had the mis- 
fortune to be sadly plagued by her numerous family. Her 
parents required a great deal of looking after, and they 
had connections and companions who were scarcely ever 
out' of mischief. So Mrs. Orange said to herself, " I really 
cannot be troubled with these torments any longer : I must 
put them all to school." 

Mrs. Orange took off her pinafore, and dressed herself 
very nicely, and took up her baby, and went out to call 
upon another lady of the name of Mrs. Lemon, who kept 
a preparatory establishment. Mrs. Orange stood upon the 
scraperlx) pull at the bell, and gave a ring-ting-ting. 

Mrs. Lemon's neat little housemaid, pulling up her socks 
as she came along the passage, answered the Ring-tin g- 
ting. 

" Good-morning," said Mrs. Orange. " Fine day. How 
do you do ? Mrs. Lemon at home ? " 

"Yes, ma'am." 

" Will you say Mrs. Orange and baby ? " 

" Yes, ma r am. Walk in." 

Mrs. Orange's baby was a very fine one, and real wax 
all over. Mrs. Lemon's baby was leather and bran. 
However, when Mrs. Lemon came into the drawing-room 
with her baby in her arms, Mrs. Orange said politely, 
" Good-morning. Fine day. How do you do ? And how 
is little Tootleum-boots ? " 

"Well, she is but poorly. Cutting her teeth, ma'am," 
said Mrs. Lemon. 

" Oh, indeed, ma'am ! " said Mrs. Orange. " No fits, I 
hope ? " 

"No, ma'am." 

" How many teeth has she, ma'am ? " 

"Five, ma'am." 

"My Emilia, ma'am, has eight," said Mrs. Orange. 
" Shall we lay them on the mantle-piece side by side, 
while we converse ? " 

" By all means, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. " Hem ! " 



440 HOLIDAY KOMANCE. 

"The first question is, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange, 
" I don't bore you ? " 

"Not in the least, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. "Far 
from it, I assure you." 

" Then pray have you," said Mrs. Orange, " have you 
any vacancies ? " 

" Yes, ma'am. How many might you require ? " 

" Why, the truth is, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange, u I 
have come to the conclusion that my children," — oh, I 
forgot to say that they call the grown-up people children 
in that country ! — " that my children are getting positive- 
ly too much for me. Let me see. Two parents, two in- 
timate friends of theirs, one godfather, two godmothers, and 
an aunt. Have you as many as eight vacancies ? " 

" I have just eight, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. 

" Most fortunate ! Terms moderate, I think ? " 

" Very moderate, ma'am." 

" Diet good, I believe ? " 

"Excellent, ma'am." 

" Unlimited ? " 

" Unlimited." 

"Most satisfactory! Corporal punishment dispensed 
with?" 

"Why, we do occasionally shake," said Mrs. Lemon, 
" and we have slapped. But only in extreme cases." 

" Could I, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange, " could I see the 
establishment ? " 

" With the greatest of pleasure, ma'am," said Mrs. 
Lemon. 

Mrs. Lemon took Mrs. Orange into the schoolroom, 
where there were a number of pupils. " Stand up, chil- 
dren ! " said Mrs. Lemon ; and they all stood up. 

Mrs. Orange whispered to Mrs. Lemon, "There is a. 
pale, bald child, with red whiskers, in disgrace. Might I 
ask what he has done ? " 

" Come here, White," said Mrs. Lemon, " and tell this 
lady what you have been doing." 

" Betting on horses," said White sulkily. 

" Are you sorry for it, you naughty child ? " said Mrs. 
Lemon. 

"No," said White. " Sorry to lose, but shouldn't be 
sorry to win." 

"There's a vicious boy for you, ma'am," said Mrs. 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 441 

Lemon. " Go along with you, sir. This is Brown, Mrs. 
Orange. Oh, a sad case, Brown's ! Never knows when he 
has had enough. Greedy. How is your gout, sir ? " 

" Bad," said Brown. 

" What else can you expect ? " said Mrs. Lemon. 
"Your stomach is the size of two. Go and take exer- 
cise directly. Mrs. Black, come here to me. Now, here 
is a child, Mrs. Orange, ma'am, who is always at play. 
She can't be kept at home a single day together ; always 
gadding about and spoiling her clothes. Play, play, play, 
play, from morning to night, and to morning again. 
How can she expect to improve ? " 

" Don't expect to improve," sulked Mrs. Black. " Don't 
want to." 

" There is a specimen of her temper, ma'am," said Mrs. 
Lemon. " To see her when she is tearing about, neglect- 
ing every thing else, you would suppose her to be at least 
good-humored. But bless you, ma'am, she is as pert and 
flouncing a minxes ever you met with in all your days ! " 

" You must have a great deal of trouble with them, 
ma'am," said Mrs. Orange. 

" Ah, I have, indeed, ma'am ! " said Mrs. Lemon. 
" What with their tempers, what with their quarrels, what 
with their never knowing what's good for them, and what 
with their always wanting to domineer, deliver me from 
these unreasonable children ! " 

"Well, I wish you good-morning, ma'am," said Mrs. 
Orange. 

"Well, I wish you good-morning, ma'am," said Mrs. 
Lemon. 

So Mrs. Orange took up her baby and went home, and 
told the family that plagued her so that they were all 
going to be sent to school. They said they didn't want 
to go to school ; but she packed up their boxes, and packed 
them off. 

" Oh dear me, dear me ! Best and be thankful ! " said 
Mrs. Orange, throwing herself back in her little arm- 
chair. " Those troublesome troubles are got rid of, please 
the pigs !" 

Just then another lady, named Mrs. Alicumpaine, came 
calling at the street-door with a ring-ting-ting. 

" My dear Mrs. Alicumpaine," said Mrs. Orange, " how 
do you do ? Pray stay to dinner. We have but a 



442 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

simple joint of sweet-stuff, followed by a plain dish of 
bread and treacle ; but, if you will take us as you find 
us, it will be so kind ! " 

"Don't mention it," said Mrs. Alicumpaine. "I shall 
be too glad. But what do you think I have come for, 
ma'am? Guess, ma'am." 

" I really cannot guess, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange. 

"Why, I am going to have a small juvenile party 
to-night," said Mrs. Alicumpaine ; " and, if you and Mr. 
Orange and baby would but join us, we should be com- 
plete." 

" More than charmed, I am sure ! " said Mrs. Orange. 

" So kind of you ! " said Mrs. Alicumpaine. " But I 
hope the children won't bore you ? " 

" Dear things ! Not at all," said Mrs. Orange. " I dote 
upon them." 

Mr. Orange here came home from the city; and he 
came, too, with a ring-ting-ting. 

" James,^ love," said Mrs. Orange, "you look tired. 
What has been doing in the city to-day ? " 

" Trap, bat, and ball, my dear," said Mr. Orange ; " and 
it knocks a man up." 

" That dreadfully anxious city, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange 
to Mrs. Alicumpaine ; " so wearing, is it not ? " 

" Oh, so trying ! " said Mrs. Alicumpaine. " John has 
lately been speculating in the peg-top ring; and X often 
say to him at night, ' John, is the result worth the wear 
and tear?'" 

Dinner was ready by this time : so they sat down to- 
dinner ; and while Mr. Orange carved the joint of sweet- 
stuff, he said, "It's a poor heart that never rejoices. 
Jane, go down to the cellar, and fetch a bottle of the 
Upest ginger-beer." 

At tea-time, Mr. and Mrs. Orange, and baby, and Mrs. 
Alicumpaine went off to Mrs. Alicumpaine's house. The 
children had not come yet ; but the ball-room was ready 
for them, decorated with paper flowers. 

" How very sweet ! " said Mrs. Orange. ".The dear 
things ! How pleased they will be ! " 

"I don't care for children myself," said Mr. Orange, 
gaping. 

" Not for girls ? " said Mrs. Alicumpaine. " Come ! you 
care for girls ?" 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 443 

Mr. Orange shook his head, and gaped again. "Friv- 
olous and vain, ma'am." 

u My dear James," cried Mrs. Orange, who had been 
peeping about, " do look here. Here's the supper for the 
darlings, ready laid in the room behind the folding-doors. 
Here's their little pickled salmon, I do declare ! And 
here's their little salad, and their little roast beef and 
fowls, and their little pastry, and their wee, wee, wee, 
champagne ! " 

" Yes, I thought it best, ma'am," said Mrs. Alicumpaine, 
" that they should have their supper by themselves. Our 
table is in the corner here, where the gentlemen can have 
their wineglass of negus, and their egg-sandwich, and their 
quiet game at beggar-my-neighbor, and look on. As for 
us, ma'am, we shall have quite enough to do to manage 
the company." 

" Oh^iudeed, you may say so ! Quite enough, ma'am ! " 
said Mrs. Orange. 

The company began to come. The first of them was 
a stout boy, with a white top-knot and spectacles. The 
housemaid brought him in and said, " Compliments, and 
at what time was he to be fetched!" Mrs. Alicumpaine 
said, " Not a moment later than ten. How do you do, sir ? 
Go and sit down." Then a number of other children came ; 
boys by themselves, and girls by themselves, and boys 
and girls together. They didn't behave at all well. Some 
of them looked through quizzing-glasses at others, and 
said, " Who are those ? Don't know them." Some of them 
looked through quizzing-glasses at others, and said, " How 
do ? " Some of them had cups of tea or coffee handed to 
them by others, and said, " Thanks ; much ! " A good 
many boys stood about, and felt their shirt-collars. Four 
tiresome fat boys would stand in the doorway, and talk 
about the newspapers, till Mrs. Alicumpaine went to them 
and said, " My dears, I really cannot allow you to prevent 
people from coming in. I shall be truly sorry to do it ; 
but, if you put yourselves in everybody's way, I must posi- 
tively send you home." One boy, with a beard and a 
large white waistcoat, who stood straddling on the hearth- 
rug warming his coat-tails, was sent home. " Highly in- 
correct, my dear," said Mrs. Alicumpaine, handing him 
out of the room, " and I cannot permit it." 

There was a children's band, — harp, cornet, and piano, 



444 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

— and Mrs. Alicurupaine and Mrs. Orange bustled among 
the children to persuade them to take partners and dance. 
But they were so obstinate ! For quite a long time they 
would not be persuaded to take partners and dance. 
Most of the boys said, " Thanks ; much ! But not at pres- 
ent." And most of the rest of the boys said, "Thanks; 
much ! But never do." 

" Oh, these children are very wearing ! " said Mrs. 
Alicumpaine to Mrs. Orange. 

" Dear things ! I dote upon them ; but they are wear- 
ing," said Mrs. Orange to Mrs. Alicumpaine. 

At last they did begin in a slow and melancholy way to 
slide about to the music ; though even then they wouldn't 
mind what they were told, but would have this partner, and 
wouldn't have that partner, and showed temper about it. 
And they wouldn't smile, — no, not on any account they 
wouldn't ; but, when the music stopped, went round and 
round the room in dismal twos, as if everybody else was 
dead. 

" Oh, it's very hard indeed to get these vexing children 
to be entertained ! " said Mrs. Alicumpaine to Mrs. Orange. 

" I dote upon the darlings ; but it is hard," said Mrs. 
Orange to Mrs. Alicumpaine. 

They were trying children, that's the truth. First, they 
wouldn't sing when they were asked ; and then, when every- 
body fully believed they wouldn't, they would. " If you 
serve us so any more, my love," said Mrs. Alicumpaine to a 
tall child, with a good deal of white back, in mauve silk 
trimmed with lace, " it will be my painful privilege to offer 
you a bed, and to send you to it immediately." 

The girls were so ridiculously dressed, too, that they were 
in rags before supper. How could the boys help treading 
on their trains ? And yet when their trains were trodden 
on, they often showed temper again, and looked as black, 
they did ! However, they all seemed to be pleased when 
Mrs. Alicumpaine said, " Supper is ready, children ! " And 
they went crowding and pushing in, as if they had had 
dry bread for dinner. 

" How are the children getting on ? " said Mr. Orange to 
Mrs. Orange, when Mrs. Orange came to look after baby. 
Mrs. Orange had left baby on a shelf near Mr. Orange 
while he played at beggar-my-neighbor, and had asked him 
to keep his eye upon her now and then. 



tofi^h, 




*wt® 



THE OBSTINATE BOYS. 



HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 445 

" Most charmingly, my dear ! " said Mrs. Orange. " So 
droll to see their little flirtations and jealousies ! Do come 
and look!" 

" Much obliged to you, my dear," said Mr. Orange ; " but 
I don't care about children myself." 

So Mrs. Orange, having seen that baby was safe, went 
back without Mr. Orange to the room where the children 
were having supper. 

" What are they doing now ? " said Mrs. Orange to Mrs. 
Alicumpaine. 

" They are making speeches, and playing at parliament," 
said Mrs. Alicumpaine to Mrs Orange. 

On hearing this, Mrs. Orange set off once more back 
again to Mr. Orange, and said, " James dear, do come. The 
children are playing at parliament." 

" Thank you, my dear," said Mr. Orange, " but I don't 
care about parliament myself." 

So Mrs. Orange went once again without Mr. Orange to 
the room where the children were having supper, to see them 
playing at parliament. And she found some of the boys 
crying, "Hear, hear, hear!" while other boys cried "No, 
no ! " and others " Question ! " " Spoke ! " and all sorts of 
nonsense that ever you heard. Then one of those tiresome 
fat boys who had stopped the doorway told them he was on 
his legs (as if they couldn't see that he wasn't on his head, 
or on his any thing else) to explain, and that, with the per- 
mission of his honorable friend, if he would allow him to 
call him so (another tiresome boy bowed), he would proceed 
to explain. Then he went on for a long time in a sing- 
song (whatever he meant), did this troublesome fat boy, 
about that he held in his hand a glass ; and about that he 
had come down to that house that night to discharge what 
he would call a public duty ; and about that, on the present 
occasion, he would lay his hand (his other hand) upon his 
heart, and would tell honorable gentlemen that he was about 
to open the door to general approval. Then he opened the 
door by saying, "To our hostess ! " and everybody else said 
" To our hostess ! " and then there were cheers. Then 
another tiresome boy started up in sing-song, and then half 
a dozen noisy and nonsensical boys at once. But at last 
Mrs. Alicumpaine said, "I cannot have this din. Now, 
children, you have played at parliament very nicely ; but 



446 HOLIDAY ROMANCE. 

parliament gets tiresome after a little while, and it's time 
you left off, for you will soon be fetched." 

After another dance (with more tearing to rags than 
before supper), they began to be fetched; and you will be 
very glad to be told that the tiresome fat boy who had been 
on his legs was walked off first without any ceremony. 
When they were all gone, poor Mrs. Alicumpaine dropped 
upon a sofa, and said to Mrs. Orange, " These children will 
be the death of me at last, ma'am, — they will indeed ! " 

" I quite adore them, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange ; " but 
they do want variety." 

Mr. Orange got his hat, and Mrs. Orange got her bonnet 

and her baby, and they set out to walk home. They had to 

pass Mrs. Lemon's preparatory establishment on their way. 

" I wonder, James dear," said Mrs. Orange, looking up at 

the window, " whether the precious children are asleep ! " 

" I don't care much whether they are or not, myself," 
said Mr. Orange. 
" James dear ! " 

"You dote upon them, you know," said Mr. Orange. 
" That's another thing." 

" I do," said Mrs. Orange rapturously. " Oh, I do ! " 
" I don't," said Mr. Orange. 

" But I was thinking, James love,' said Mrs. Orange, 
pressing his arm, " whether our dear, good, kind Mrs. Lemon 
would like them to stay the holidays with her." 

"If she was paid for it, I daresay she would," said Mr. 
Orange. 

" I adore them, James," said Mrs. Orange ; " but suppose 
we pay her, then ! " 

This was what brought that country to such perfection, 
and made it such a delightful place to live in. The grown- 
up people (that would be in other countries) soon left off 
being allowed any holidays after Mr. and Mrs. Orange tried 
the experiment ; and the children (that would be in other 
countries) kept them at school as long as ever they lived, 
and made them do whatever they were told. 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 

447 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 



FIRST CHAPTER. 

It happened in this wise — 

But, silting with my pen in my hand looking at those 
words again, without descrying any hint in them of the 
words that should follow, it comes into my mind that they 
have an abrupt appearance. They may serve, however, if 
I let them remain, to suggest how very difficult I find it to 
begin to explain my explanation. An uncouth phrase : and 
yet I do not see my way to a better. 



SECOND CHAPTER. 

It happened in this wise — 

But, looking at those words, and comparing them with 
my former opening, I find they are the self-same words 
repeated. This is the more surprising to me, because I 
employ them in quite a new connection. For indeed I 
declare that my intention was to discard the commence- 
ment I first had in my thoughts, and to give the preference 
to another of an entirely different nature, dating my ex- 
planation from an anterior period of my life. I will make 
a third trial, without erasing this second failure, protesting 
that it is not my design to conceal any of my infirmities, 
whether they be of head or heart. 

39* 449 



450 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 



THIRD CHAPTER. 

Not as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I 
will come upon it by degrees. The natural manner, after 
all, for God knows that is how it came upon me. 

My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my 
infant home was a cellar in Preston. I recollect the sound 
of father's Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above, 
as being different in my young hearing from the sound of 
all other clogs ; and I recollect, that, when tnother came 
down the cellar-steps, I used tremblingly to speculate on 
her feet having a good or an ill tempered look, — on her 
knees, — on her waist, — until finally her face came into 
view, and settled the question. From this it will be seen 
that I was timid, and that the cellar-steps were steep, and 
that the doorway was very low. 

Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her 
face, upon her figure, and not least of all upon her voice. 
Her sharp and high-pitched words were squeezed out of 
her, as by the compression of bony fingers on a leathern 
bag ; anj she had a way of rolling her eyes about and 
about the cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and hungry. 
Father, with his shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a 
three-legged stool, looking at the empty grate, until she 
would pluck the stool from under -him, and bid him go 
bring some money home. Then he would dismally ascend 
the steps ; and I, holding my ragged shirt and trousers 
together with a hand (my only braces), would feint and 
dodge from mother's pursuing grasp at my hair. 

A worldly little devil was mother's usual name for me. 
Whether I cried for that I was in the dark, or for that it 
was cold, or for that I was hungry, or whether I squeezed 
myself into a warm corner when there was a fire, or ate 
voraciously when there was food, .she would still say, "0 
you worldly little devil ! " And the sting of it was, that I 
quite well knew myself to be a worldly little devil. Worldly 
as to wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as to 
wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I 
inwardly compared how much I got of those good things 
with how much father and mother got, when, rarely, those 
good things were going, „ 

Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and then 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 451 

I would be locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a 
time. I was at my worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded 
myself up to a worldly yearning for enough of any thing 
(except misery), and for the death of mother's father, who 
was a machine-maker at Birmingham, and on whose de- 
cease, I had heard mother say, she would come into a whole 
courtful of houses " if she had her rights." Worldly little 
devil, I would stand about, musingly fitting my cold bare 
feet into cracked bricks and crevices of the damp cellar 
floor, — walking over my grandfather's body, so to speak, 
into the courtful of houses, and selling them for meat and 
drink, and clothes to wear. 

At last a change came down into our cellar. The univer- 
sal change came down even as low as that, — so will it 
mount to any height on which a human creature can perch, 
— and brought other changes with it. 

We liad a heap of I don't know what foul litter in the 
darkest* corner, which we called " the bed." For three 
days mother lay upon it without getting up, and then began 
at times to laugh. If I had ever heard her laugh before, it 
had been so seldom that the strange sound frightened me. 
It frightened father too ; and we took it by turns to give 
her water. Then she began to move her head from side to 
side, and sing. After that, she getting no better, father 
fell a-laughing and a-singing ; and then there was only I to 
give them both water, and they both died. 



FOURTH CHAPTER. 

When I was lifted out of the cellar by two men, of 
whom one came peeping down alone first, and ran away and 
brought the other, I could hardly bear the light of the 
street. I was sitting in the road-way, blinking at it, and at 
a ring of people collected around me, but not close to me, 
when, true to my character of worldly little devil, I broke 
silence by saying, " I am hungry and thirsty ! " 

" Does he know they are dead ? " asked one of another. 

" Do you know your father and mother are both dead of 
fever ? " asked a third of me severely. 



452 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 

H I don't know what it is to be dead. I supposed it 
meant that, when the cup rattled against their teeth, and 
the water spilt over them. I am hungry and thirsty." 
That was all I had to say about it. 

The ring of people widened outward from the inner side 
as I looked around me ; and I smelt vinegar, and what I 
know to be camphor, thrown in towards where I sat. 
Presently some one put a great vessel of smoking vinegar 
on the ground near me ; and then they all looked at me in 
silent horror as I ate and drank of what was brought for 
me. I knew at the time they had a horror of me, but I 
couldn't help it. 

I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur of dis- 
cussion had begun to arise respecting what was to be done 
with me next, when I heard a cracked voice somewhere in 
the ring say, " My name is Hawkyard, Mr. Verity Hawk- 
yard, of West Bromwich." Then the ring split in one 
place ; and a yellow-faced, peak-nosed gentleman, clad all in 
iron-gray to his gaiters, pressed forward with a policeman 
and another official of some sort. He came forward close 
to the vessel of smoking vinegar ; from which he sprinkled 
himself carefully, and me copiously. 

" He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this young boy, 
who is just dead too," said Mr. Hawkyard. 

I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said in a raven- 
ing manner, " Where's his houses ? " 

" Hah ! Horrible worldliness on the edge of the grave," 
said Mr. Hawkyard, casting more of the vinegar over me, 
as if to get my devil out of me. " I have undertaken a 
slight — a ve-ry slight — trust in behalf of this boy; quite 
a voluntary trust ; a matter of mere honor, if not of mere 
sentiment : still I have taken it upon myself, and it shall 
be (oh, yes, it shall be !) discharged." 

The bystanders seemed to form an opinion of this gentle- 
man much more favorable than their opinion of me. 

" He shall be taught," said Mr. Hawkyard, " (oh, yes, he 
shall be taught ! ) but what is to be done with him for the 
present ? He may be infected. He may disseminate in- 
fection." The ring widened considerably. "What is to 
be done with him ? " 

He held some talk with the two officials. I could dis- 
tinguish no word save " Farm-house." There was another 
sound several times repeated, which was wholly meaning- 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 453 

less in my ears then, but which I knew afterwards to be 
"Hoghton Towers." 

"Yes," said Mr. Hawkyard. " I think that sounds prom- 
ising; I think that sounds hopeful. And he can be put 
by himself in a ward, for a night or two, you say ? " 

It seemed to be the police-officer who had said so ; for it 
was he who replied, Yes ! It was he, too, who finally took 
me by "the arm, and walked me before him through tlie 
streets, into a whitewashed room in a bare building, where 
I had a chair to sit in, a table to sit at, an iron bedstead 
and good mattress to lie upon, and a rug and blanket to 
cover me. Where I had enough to eat, too, and was showu 
how to clean the tin porringer in which it was conveyed to 
me, until it was as good as a looking-glass. Here, likewise, 
I was put in a bath, and had new clothes brought to me ; and 
my old rags were burnt, and I was camphored and vine- 
gared and disinfected in a variety of ways. 

When all this was done, — I don't know in how many 
days or how few, but it matters not, — Mr. Hawkyard step- 
ped in at the door, remaining close to it, and said, "Go 
and stand against the opposite wall, George Silverman. As 
far off as you can. That'll do. How do you feel?" 
• I told him that I didn't feel cold, and didn't feel hungry, 
and didn't feel thirsty. That was the whole round of 
human feelings, as far as I knew, except the pain of being 
beaten. 

"Well," said he, "you are going, George, to a healthy 
farm-house to be purified. Keep in the air there as much 
as you can. Live an out-of-door life there, until you are 
fetched away. You had better not say much — in fact, 
you had better be very careful not to say any thing — 
about what your parents died of, or they might not like to 
take you in. Behave well, and I'll put you to school ; oh, 
yes ! I'll put you to school, though I am not obligated to 
do it. I am a servant of the Lord, George ; and I have 
been a good servant to him, I have, these five and thirty 
years. The Lord has had a good servant in me, and he 
knows it." 

What I then supposed him to mean by this, I cannot 
imagine. As little do I know when I began to compre- 
hend that he was a prominent member of some obscure 
denomination or congregation, every member of which held 
forth to the rest when so inclined, and among whom he 



454 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 

was called Brother Hawkyard. It was enough for me to 
know, on that day in the ward, that the farmer's cart was 
waiting for me at the street corner. I was not slow to get 
into it ; for it was the first ride I ever had in my life. 

It made me sleepy, and I slept. First, I stared at Pres- 
ton streets as long as they lasted ; and, meanwhile, I may 
have had some small dumb wondering within me where- 
abouts our cellar was ; but I doubt it. Such a worldly little 
devil was I, that I took no thought who would bury father 
and mother, or where they would be buried, or when. The 
question whether the eating and drinking by day, and the 
covering by night, would be as good at the farm-house as 
at the ward superseded those questions. 

The jolting of the cart on a loose stony road awoke me ; 
and I found that we were mounting a steep hill, where the 
road was a rutty by-road through a field. And so, by frag- 
ments of an ancient terrace, and by some rugged out-build- 
ings that had once been fortified, and passing under a ruined 
gateway we came to the old farm-house in the thick stone 
wall outside the old quadrangle of Hoghton Towers : which 
I looked at like a stupid savage, seeing no specialty in, 
seeing no antiquity in ; assuming all farm-houses to re- 
semble it ; assigning the decay I noticed to the one po-' 
tent cause of all ruin that I knew, — poverty ; eying the 
pigeons in their flights, the cattle in their stalls, the ducks 
in the pond, and the fowls pecking about the yard, with a 
hungry hope that plenty of them might be killed for din- 
ner while I staid there ; wondering whether the scrubbed 
dairy vessels, drying in the sunlight, could be goodly por- 
ringers out of which the master ate his belly-filling food, 
and which he polished when he had done, according to my 
ward experience; shrinkingly doubtful whether the shad- 
ows, passing over that airy height on the bright spring day, 
were not something in^he nature of frowns, — sordid, afraid, 
unadmiring, — a small brute to shudder at. 

To that time I had never had the faintest impression of 
duty. I had had no knowledge whatever that there was 
any thing lovely in this life. When I had occasionally 
slunk up the cellar-steps into the street, and glared in at 
shop-windows, I had done so with no higher feelings than 
we may suppose to animate a man gy young dog or wolf- 
cub. It is equally the fact that I had never been alone, in 
the sense of holding unselfish converse with myself. I had 
been solitary often enough, but nothing better. 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 455 

Such was my condition when I sat down to my dinner 
that day, in the kitchen of the old farm-house. Such was 
my condition when I lay on my bed in the old farm-house 
that night, stretched out opposite the narrow mullioned 
window, in the cold light of the moon, like a young vam- 
pire. 



FIFTH CHAPTER. 

What do I know now of Hoghton Towers ? Very 
little ; for I have been gratefully unwilling to disturb my 
first impressions. A house, centuries old, on high ground 
a mile or so removed from the road between Preston and 
Blackburn, where the first James of England, in his hurry 
to make money by making baronets, perhaps made some of 
those remunerative dignitaries. A house, centuries old, de- 
serted and falling to pieces, its woods and gardens long since 
grass-land or ploughed up, the Rivers Kibble and Darwen 
glancing below it, and a. vague haze of smoke, against 
which not even the supernatural prescience of the first 
Stuart could foresee a counterblast, hinting at steam-power, 
powerful in two distances. 

What did I know then of Hoghton Towers ? When I 
first peeped in at the gate of the lifeless quadrangle, and 
started from the mouldering statue becoming visible to me 
like its guardian ghost ; when I stole round by the back of 
the farm-house, and got in among the ancient rooms, many 
of them with their floors and ceilings falling, the beams 
and rafters hanging dangerously down, the plaster dropping 
as I trod, the oaken panels stripped away, the windows half 
walled up, half broken ; when I discovered a gallery com- 
manding the old kitchen, and looked down between bal- 
ustrades upon a massive old table and benches, fearing 
to see I know not what dead-alive* creatures come in and 
seat themselves, and look up with I know not what dread- 
ful eyes, or lack of eyes, at me ; when all over the house I 
was awed by gaps and chinks where the sky stared sorrow- 
fully at me, where the birds passed, and the ivy rustled, 
and the stains of winter weather blotched the rotten floors ; 
when down at the bottom of dark pits of staircase, into 



45G GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 

which the stairs had sunk, green leaves trembled, butter- 
flies fluttered, and bees hummed in and out through the 
broken doorways ; when encircling the whole, ruin were 
sweet scents, and sights of fresh green growth, and ever- 
renewing life, that I had never dreamed of, — I say, when 
I passed into such clouded perception of these things as my 
dark soul could compass, what did I know then of Hoghton 
Towers ? 

I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully at me. 
Therein have I anticipated the answer. I knew that all 
these things looked sorrowfully at me ; that they seemed to 
sigh or whisper, not without pity for me, " Alas ! poor, 
worldly little devil ! " 

There were two or three rats at the bottom of one of the 
smaller pits of broken staircase when I craned over and. 
looked in. They were scuffling for some prey that was 
there; and, when they started and hid themselves close 
together in the dark, I thought of the old life (it had grown 
old already) in the cellar. 

How not to be this worldly little devil? how not to 
have a repugnance towards myself as I had towards the 
rats ? I hid in a corner of one of the smaller chambers, 
frightened at myself, and crying (it was the first time I 
had ever cried for any cause not purely physical), and I 
tried to think about it. One of the farm-ploughs came into 
my range of view just then ; and it seemed to help me as it 
went on with its two horses up and down the field so peace- 
fully and quietly. 

There was a girl of about my own age in the farm-house 
family, and she sat opposite to me at the narrow table at 
meal-times. It had come into my mind, at our first dinner, 
that she might take the fever from me. The thought had 
not disquieted me then. I had only speculated how she 
would look under the altered circumstances, and whether 
she would die. But it came into my mind now, that I 
might try to prevent her taking the fever by keeping away 
from her. I knew I should have but scrambling board if I 
did ; so much the less worldly and less devilish the deed 
would be, I thought. 

Erom that hour, I withdrew myself at early morning 
into secret corners of the ruined house, and remained hid- 
den there until she went to bed. At first, when meals were 
ready, I used to hear them calling me ; and then my resolu- 



GEOEGE SILVEEMAN'S EXPLANATION. 457 

tion weakened. But I strengthened it again, by going far- 
ther off into the ruin, and getting out of hearing. I often 
watched for her at the dim windows ; and, when I saw that 
she was fresh and rosy, felt much happier. 

Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to the human- 
izing of myself, I suppose some childish love arose within 
me. I felt, in some sort, dignified by the pride of protect- 
ing her, — by the pride of making the sacrifice for her. As 
my heart swelled with that new feeling, it insensibly soft- 
ened about mother and father. It seemed to have been 
frozen before, and now to be thawed. The old ruin and 
all the lovely things that haunted it were not sorrowful 
for me only, but sorrowful for mother and father as well. 
Therefore did I cry again, and often too. 

The farm-house family conceived me to be of a morose 
temper, -and were very short with me; though they never 
stinted me in such broken fare as was to be got out of regu- 
lar hours. One night, when I lifted the kitchen latch at 
my usual time, Sylvia (that was her pretty name) had but 
just gone out of the room. Seeing her ascending the oppo- 
site stairs, I stood still at the door. She had heard the 
clink of the latch, and looked round. 

" George/*' she called to me in a pleased voice, " to-morrow 
is my birthday ; and we are to have a fiddler, and there's a 
party of boys and girls coming in a cart, and'we shall dance. 
I invite you. Be sociable for once, George." 

" I am very sorry, miss," I answered ; " but I — but, no ; 
I can't come." 

" You are a disagreeable, ill-humored lad," she returned 
disdainfully ; " and I ought not to have asked you. I shall 
never speak to you again." 

As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire, after she was 
gone, I felt' that the farmer bent his brows upon me. 

" Eh, lad ! " said he ; " Sylvy's right. You're as moody 
and broody a lad as never I set eyes on yet." 

I tried to assure him that I meant no harm ; but he only 
said coldly, " Maybe not, maybe not ! There ! get thy sup- 
per, get thy supper ; and then thou canst sulk to thy heart's 
content again." 

Ah ! if they could have seen me next day, in the ruin, 
watching for the arrival of the cart full of merry young 
guests; if they could have seen me at night, gliding out 
from behind the ghostly statue, listening to the music and 



458 GEOEGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 

the fall of dancing feet, and watching the lighted farm- 
house windows from the quadrangle when all the ruin was 
dark ; if they could have read my heart, as I crept up to 
bed by the back way, comforting myself with the reflection, 
" They will take no hurt from me," — they would not have 
thought mine a morose or an unsocial nature- 
It was in these ways that I began to form a shy dispo- 
sition; to be of a timidly silent character under miscon- 
struction ; to have an inexpressible, perhaps a morbid, 
dread of ever being sordid or worldly. It was in these 
ways that my nature came to shape itself to such a mould, 
even before it was affected by the influences of the studious 
and retired life of a poor scholar. 



SIXTH CHAPTER. 

Brother Hawkyard (as he insisted on my calling 
him) put me to school, and told me to work my way. 
" You are all right, George," he said. " I have been the 
best servant the Lord has had in his service for this five 
and thirty year (oh, I have !) ; and he knows the value of 
such a servant as I have been to him (oh, yes, he does !) ; and 
he'll prosper your schooling as a part of my reward. That's 
what /^e'll do, George. He'll do it for me." 

From the first I could not like this familiar knowledge 
of the ways of the sublime, inscrutable Almighty, on 
Brother Hawkyard' s part. As I grew a little wiser, and 
still a little wiser, I liked it less and less. His manner, 
too, of confirming himself in a parenthesis, — as if, know- 
ing himself, he doubted his own word, — I found distaste-' 
ful. I cannot tell how much these dislikes cost me ; for I 
had a dread that they were worldly. 

As time went on, I became a Foundation-boy on a good 
foundation, and I cost Brother Hawkyard nothing. When 
I had worked my way so far, I worked yet harder, in the 
hope of ultimately getting a presentation to college and a 
fellowship. My health has never been strong (some vapor 
from the Preston cellar cleaves to me I think) ; and what 
with much work and some weakness, I came again to be 
regarded — that is, by my fellow-stuclents — as unsocial. 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 459 

All through my time as a foundation-boy, I was within a 
few miles of Brother Hawkyard' s congregation ; and when- 
ever I was what we called a leave-boy on a Sunday, I went 
over there at this desire. Before the knowledge became 
forced upon me that outside their place of meeting these 
brothers and sisters were no better than the rest of the 
human family, but on the whole were, jx) put the case mild- 
ly, as bad as most, in respect of giving short weight in 
their shops, and not speaking the truth, — I say, before 
this knowledge became forced upon me, their prolix ad- 
dresses, their inordinate conceit, their daring ignorance, their 
investment of the Supreme B,uler of heaven and earth with 
their own miserable meannesses and littlenesses, greatly 
shocked me. Still, as their term for the frame of mind 
that could not perceive them to be in an exalted state of 
grace was the "worldly" state, I did for a time suffer 
tortures- under my inquiries of myself whether that young 
worldly-devilish spirit of mine could secretly be lingering 
at the bottom of my non-appreciation. 

Brother Hawkyard was the popular expounder in this 
assembly, and generally occupied the platform (there was 
a little platform with a table on it, in lieu of a pulpit) 
first, on a Sunday afternoon. He was by trade a drysalter. 
Brother Gimblet, an elderly man with a crabbed face, a 
large dog's-eared shirt-collar, and a spotted blue neckerchief 
reaching up behind to the crown of his head, was also a 
drysalter, and an expounder. Brother Gimblet professed 
the greatest admiration for Brother Hawkyard, but (I had 
thought more than once) bore him a jealous grudge. 

Let whosoever may persue these lines kindly take the 
pains here to read twice my solemn pledge, that what I 
write of the language and customs of the congregation in 
question I write scrupulously, literally, exactly, from the 
life and the truth. 

On the first Sunday after I had won what I had so long 
tried for, and when it was certain that I was going up to 
college, Brother Hawkyard concluded a long exhortation 
thus : — 

"Well, my friends and fellow-sinners, now I told you 
when I began, that I didn't know a word of what I was 
going to say to you (and no, I did not !), but that it was all 
one to me, because I knew the Lord would put into my 
mouth the words I wanted." 



460 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 

("That's it!" from Brother Gimblet.) 

" And he did put into my mouth the words I wanted." 

(" So he did ! " from Brother Gimblet.) 

" And why ? " 

("Ah, let's have that !" from Brother Gimblet.) 

" Because I have been his faithful servant for five and 
thirty years, and because he knows it. For five and thirty 
years ! And he knows it, mind you ! I got those words 
that I wanted, on account of my wages. I got 'em from 
the Lord, my fellow-sinners. Down ! I said, ' Here's a 
heap of wages due; let us have something down, on 
account.' And I got it down, and I paid it over to you ; 
and you won't wrap it up in a napkin, nor yet in a towel, 
nor yet pocketankercher, but you'll put it out at good 
interest. Very well. Now, my brothers and sisters and 
fellow-sinners, I am going to conclude with a question, and 
I'll make it so plain (with the help of the Lord, after five 
and thirty years, I should rather hope !) as that the Devil 
shall not be able to confuse it in your heads, — which he 
would be overjoyed to do." 

(" Just his way. Crafty old blackguard ! " from Brother 
Gimblet.) 

" And the question is this, Are the angels learned ? " 

("Not they. Not a bit on it ! " from Brother Gimblet, 
with the greatest confidence.) 

"Not they. And where's the proof? sent ready-made 
by the hand of the Lord. Why, there's one among us here 
now, that has got all the learning that can be crammed 
into him. I got him all the learning that could be 
crammed into him. His grandfather " (this I had never 
heard before) "was a brother of ours. He was Brother 
Parksop. That's what he was. Parksop ; Brother Park- 
sop. His worldly name was Parksop, and he was a brother 
of this brotherhood. Then wasn't he Brother Parksop ? " 

("Must be. Couldn't help hisself!" from Brother 
Gimblet.) 

" Well, he left that one now here present among us to 
the care of a brother-sinner of his (and that brother-sinner, 
mind you, was a sinner of a bigger size in his time than 
any of you ; praise the Lord !), Brother Hawkyard. Me. 
I got him, without fee or reward, — without a morsel of 
myrrh, or frankincense, nor yet amber, letting alone the 
honeycomb, — all the learning that could be crammed into 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 461 

him. Has it brought him into our temple, in the spirit? 
No. Have we had any ignorant brothers and sisters that 
didn't know round O from crooked S, come in among us 
meanwhile? Many. Then the angels are not learned; 
then they don't so much as know their alphabet. And 
now, my friends and fellow-sinners, having brought it to 
that, perhaps some brother present — perhaps you, Brother 
Gimblet — will pray a bit for us ? " 

Brother Gimblet undertook the sacred function, after 
having drawn his sleeve across his mouth, and muttered, 
" Well ! I don't know as I see my way to hitting any of 
you quite in the right place neither." He said this with a 
dark smile, and then began to bellow. What we were 
specially to be preserved from, according to his solicitations, 
was, despoilment of the orphan, suppression of testament- 
ary intentions on the part of a father or (say) grandfather, 
appropriation of the orphan's house-property, feigning to 
give in charity to the wronged one from whom we withheld 
his due ; and that class of sins. He ended with the peti- 
tion, " Give us peace ! " which, speaking for myself, was 
very much needed after twenty minutes of his bellowing. 

Even though I had not seen him when he rose from his 
knees, steaming with perspiration, glance at Brother 
Hawkyard, and even though I had not heard Brother 
Hawkyard's tone of congratulating him -on the vigor with 
which he had roared, I should have detected a malicious 
application in this prayer. Unformed suspicions to a 
similar effect had sometimes passed through my mind in 
my earlier school-days, and had always caused me great 
distress ; for they were worldly in their nature, and wide, 
very wide, of the spirit that had drawn me from Sylvia. 
They were sordid suspicions, without a shadow of proof. 
They were worthy to have originated in the unwholesome 
cellar. They were not only without proof, but against 
proof; for was I not myself a living proof of what 
Brother Hawkyard had done ? and without him, how 
should I ever have seen the sky look sorrowfully down upon 
that wretched boy at Hoghton Towers ? 

Although the dread of a relapse into a stage of savage 
selfishness was less strong upon me as I approached man- 
hood, and could act in an increased degree for myself, yet I 
was always on my guard against any tendency to such 
relapse. After getting these suspicions under my feet, I 

39* 



462 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 

had been troubled by not being able to like Brother Hawk- 
yard's manner, or his professed religion. So it came about, 
that, as I walked back that Sunday evening, I thought it 
would be an act of reparation for any such injury my 
struggling thoughts had unwillingly done him, if I wrote, 
and placed in his hands, before going to college, a full 
acknowledgment of his goodness to me, and an ample 
tribute of thanks. It might serve as an implied vindica- 
tion of him against any dark scandal from a rival brother 
and expounder, or from any other quarter. 

Accordingly, I wrote the document with much care. I 
may add with much feeling too ; for it affected me as I went 
on. Having no set studies to pursue, in the brief interval 
between leaving the Foundation and going to Cambridge, I 
determined to walk out to his place of business, and give it 
into his own hands. 

It was a winter afternoon, when I tapped at the door of 
his little counting-house, which was at the farther end of 
his long, low shop. As I did so (having entered by the back 
yard, where casks and boxes were taken in, and where 
there was the inscription, " Private way to the counting- 
house "), a shopman called to me from the counter that he 
was engaged. 

"Brother Gimblet" (said the shopman, who was one- of 
the brotherhood) " is with him." 

I thought this all the better for my purpose, and made 
bold to tap again. They were talking in a low tone, and 
money was passing ; for I heard it being counted out. 

" Who is it ? " asked Brother Hawkyard sharply. 

" .George Silverman," I answered, holding the door open. 
•'< May I come in ? " 

Both brothers seemed so astounded to see me that I felt 
shyer than usual. But they looked quite cadaverous in the 
early gaslight, and perhaps that accidental circumstance 
exaggerated the expression of their faces. 

" What is the matter ? " asked Brother Hawkyard. 

" Ay ! what is the matter ? " asked Brother Gimblet. 

" Nothing at all," I said, diffidently producing my docu- 
ment : " I am only the bearer of a letter from myself." 

" From yourself, George ? " cried Brother Hawkyard. 

" And to you," said I. 

" And to me, George ? " ' 

He turned paler, and opened it hurriedly ; but looking 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 463 

over it, and seeing generally what it was, became less 
hurried, recovered his color, and said, " Praise the Lord ! " 

"That's it!" cried Brother Gimblet. "Well put! 
Amen." 

Brother Hawkyard then said, in a livelier strain, " You 
must know, George, that Brother Gimblet and I are going 
to make our two businesses one. We are going into part- 
nership. We are settling it now. Brother Gimblet is to 
take one clear half. of the profits (oh, yes! he shall have 
it; he shall have it to the last farthing)." 

" D. V. ! " said Brother Gimblet, with his right fist firmly 
clinched on his right leg. 

"There is no objection," pursued Brother Hawkyard, 
" to my reading this aloud, George ? " 

As it was what I expressly desired should be done, 
after yesterday's prayer, I more than readily begged him to 
read it --aloud. He did so ; and Brother Gimblet listened 
with a crabbed smile. 

" It was in a good hour that I came here," he said, 
wrinkling up his eyes. " It was in a good hour, likewise, 
that I was moved yesterday to depict for the terror of evil- 
doers a character the direct opposite of Brother Hawkyard's. 
But it was the Lord that done it : I felt him at it while I 
was perspiring." 

After that it was proposed, by both of them, that I 
should attend the congregation once more before my final 
departure. What my shy reserve would undergo, from 
being expressly preached at and prayed at, I knew before- 
hand. But I reflected that it would be for the last time, 
and that it might add to the weight of my letter. It was 
well known to the brothers and sisters that there was no 
place taken for me in their paradise ; and if I showed this 
last token of deference to Brother Hawkyard, notoriously in 
despite of my own sinful inclinations, it might go some 
little way in aid of my statement that he had been good to 
me, and that I was grateful to him. Merely stipulating, 
therefore, that no express endeavor should be made for my 
conversion, — which would involve the rolling of several 
brothers and sisters on the floor, declaring that they felt all 
their sins in a heap on their left side, weighing so many 
pounds avoirdupois, as I knew from what I had seen of 
those repulsive mysteries, — I promised. 

Since the reading of my letter, Brother Gimblet had been 



464 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 

at intervals wiping one eye with an end of his spotted blue 
neckerchief, and grinning to himself. It was, however, a 
habit that brother had, to grin in an ugly manner even 
when expounding. I call to mind a delighted snarl with 
which he used to detail from the platform the torments 
reserved for the wicked (meaning all human creation except 
the brotherhood), as being remarkably hideous. 

I left the two to settle their articles of partnership, and 
count money; and I never saw them again but on the 
following Sunday. Brother Hawkyard died within two or 
three years, leaving all he possessed to Brother Gimblet, in 
virtue of a will dated (as I have been told) that very day. 

Now I was so far at rest with myself, when Sunday came, 
knowing that I had conquered my own mistrust, and 
righted Brother Hawkyard in the jaundiced vision of a 
rival, that I went, even to that coarse chapel, in a less 
sensitive state than usual. How could I foresee that the 
delicate, perhaps the diseased, corner of my mind, where I 
winced and shrunk when it was touched, or was even 
approached, would be handled as the theme of the whole 
proceedings ? 

On this occasion it was assigned to Brother Hawkyard to 
pray, and to Brother Gimblet to preach. The prayer was 
to open the ceremonies ; the discourse was to come next. 
Brothers Hawkyard and Gimblet were both on the plat- 
form ; Brother Hawkyard on his knees at the table, unmu- 
sically ready to pray ; Brother Gimblet sitting against the 
wall, grinningly ready to preach. 

"Let us offer up the sacrifice of prayer, my brothers 
and sisters and fellow-sinners." Yes ! but it was I who 
was the sacrifice. It was our poor, sinful, worldly-minded 
brother here present who was wrestled for. The now- 
opening career of this our unawakened brother might lead 
to his becoming a minister of what was called " the 
church." That was what he looked to. The church. Not 
the chapel, Lord, The church. No rectors, no vicars, no 
archdeacons, no bishops, no archbishops, in the chapel, but, 
O Lord! many such in the church. Protect our sinful 
brother from his love of lucre. Cleanse from our unawak- 
ened brother's breast his sin of wordly-mindedness. The 
prayer said infinitely more in words, but nothing more to 
any intelligible effect. 

Then Brother Gimblet came forward, and took (as I 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 465 

knew lie would) the text, " My kingdom is not of this world." 
Ah ! but whose was, my fellow-sinners ? Whose ? Why, 
our brother's here present was. The only kingdom he had 
an idea of was of this world (" That's it ! " from several of 
the congregation). What did the woman do when she lost 
the piece of money? Went and looked for it. What 
should our brother do when he lost his way ? (■" Go and 
look for it," from a sister). Go and look for it, true. But 
must he look for it in the right direction, or in the wrong ? 
(" In the right," from a brother). There spake the 
prophets ! He must look for it in the right direction, or 
he couldn't find it. But he had turned his back upon the 
right direction, and he wouldn't find it. Now, my fellow- 
sinners, to show you the difference betwixt worldly-minded- 
ness and unworldly-mindedness, betwixt kingdoms not of 
this world and kingdoms of this world, here was a letter 
wrote fey even our worldly-minded brother unto Brother 
Hawkyard. Judge, from hearing of it read, whether 
Brother Hawkyard was the faithful steward that the Lord 
had in his mind only t'other day, when, in this very place, 
he drew you the picter of the unfaithful one ; for it was 
him that done it, not me.. Don't doubt that ! 

Brother Gimblet then groaned and bellowed his way 
through my composition, and subsequently through an 
hour. The service closed with a hymn, in which the 
brothers unanimously roared, and the sisters unanimously 
shrieked at me, That I by wiles of worldly gain was 
mocked, and they on waters of sweet love were rocked; 
that I with mammon struggled in the dark, while they 
were floating in a second ark. 

I went out from all this with an aching heart and a 
weary spirit : not because I was quite so weak as to con- 
sider these narrow creatures interpreters of the Divine 
Majesty and Wisdom; but because I was weak enough to 
feel as though it were my hard fortune to be misrepresented 
and misunderstood, when I most tried to subdue any ris- 
ings of mere worldliness within me, and when I most 
hoped, that, by dint of trying earnestly, I had succeeded. 



466 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 



SEVENTH CHAPTER. 

My timidity and my obscurity occasioned me to live a 
secluded life at college, and to be little known. No relative 
ever came to visit me, for I had no relative. No intimate 
friends broke in upon my studies, for I made no inti- 
mate friends. I supported myself on my scholarship, and 
read much. My college time was otherwise not so very 
different from my time at Hoghton Towers. 

Knowing myself to be unfit for the noisier stir of social 
existence, but believing myself qualified to do my 'duty in 
a moderate, though earnest way, if I could obtain some 
small preferment in- the Church, I applied my mind to the 
clerical profession. In due sequence I took orders, was 
ordained, and began to look about me for employment. I 
must observe that I had taken a good degree, that I had. 
succeeded in winning a good fellowship, and that my means 
were ample for my retired way of life. By this time I had 
read with several young men ; and the occupation increased 
my income, while it was highly interesting to me. I once 
accidentally overheard our greatest don say to my bound- 
less joy, " That he heard it reported of Silverman that his 
gift of quiet explanation, his patience, his amiable temper, 
and his conscientiousness made him the best of coaches." 
May my " gift of quiet explanation " come more seasonably 
and powerfully to my aid in this present explanation than 
I think it will ! 

It may be in a certain degree owing to the situation of 
my college-rooms (in a corner where the day-light was 
sobered), but it is in a much larger degree referable to the 
state of my own mind, that I seem to myself, on looking 
back to this time of my life, to have been always in the 
peaceful shade. I can see others in the sunlight ; I can 
see our boats' crews and our athletic young men on the 
glistening water, or speckled with the moving lights of 
sunlit leaves ; but I myself am always in the shadow look- 
ing on. Not unsympathetically, — God forbid ! — but look- 
ing on alone, much as I looked at Sylvia from the shadows 
of. the ruined house, or looked at the red gleam shining 
through the farmer's windows, and listened to the fall of 
dancing feet, when all the ruin was dark that night in the 
quadrangle. 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 467 

I now come to the reason of my quoting that laudation 
of myself above given. Without such reason, to repeat it 
would have been mere boastfulness. 

Among those who had read with me was Mr. Fareway, 
second son of Lady Fareway, widow of Sir G-aston Fareway, 
baronet. This young, gentleman's abilities were much above 
the average ; but he came of a rich family, and was idle and 
luxurious. He presented himself to me too late, and after- 
wards came to me too irregularly, to admit of my being of 
much service to him. In the end, I considered it my duty 
to dissuade him from going up for an examination which he 
could never pass ; and he left college without a degree. 
After his departure, Lady Fareway wrote to me, represent- 
ing the justice of my returning half my fee, as I had been 
of so little use to her son. Within my knowledge a sim- 
ilar demand had not been made in any other case ; and I 
most freely admit that the justice of it had not occurred to 
me until it was pointed out. But I at once perceived it, 
yielded to it, and returned the money. 

Mr. Fareway had been gone two years or more, and 
I had forgotten him, when he one day walked into my 
rooms as I was sitting at my books. 

Said he, after the usual salutations had passed, "Mr. 
Silverman, my mother is in town here, at the hotel, and 
wishes me to present you to her." 

I was not comfortable with strangers, and I daresay I 
betrayed that I was a little nervous or unwilling. " For," 
said he, without my having spoken, " I think the interview 
may tend to the advancement of your prospects." 

It put me to the blush to think that I should be tempted 
by a worldly reason, and I rose immediately. 

Said Mr. Fareway, as we went along, " Are you a good 
hand at business ? " 

" I think not," said I. 

Said Mr. Fareway then, " My mother is." 

"Truly?" said I. 

"Yes: my mother is what is usually called a managing 
woman. Doesn't make a bad thing, for instance, even out 
of the spendthrift habits of my eldest brother abroad. 
In short, a managing woman. This is in confidence." 

He had never spoken to me in confidence, and I was 
surprised by his doing so. I said I should respect his con- 
fidence, of course,* and said no more on the delicate subject. 



468 GEOEGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 

We had but a little way to walk, and I was soon in his 
mother's company. He presented me, shook hands with 
me, and left us two (as he said) to business. 

I saw in my Lady Fareway a handsome, well-preserved 
lady of somewhat large stature, with a steady glare in her 
great round dark eyes that embarrassed me. 

Said my lady, " I have heard from my son, Mr. Silver- 
man, that you would be glad of some preferment in the 
Church." 

I gave my lady to understand that was so. 

"I don't know whether you are aware," my lady pro- 
ceeded, " that we have a presentation to a living ? I say 
we have j but, in point of fact, I have." 

I gave my lady to understand that I had not been 
aware of this. 

Said my lady, " So it is : indeed, I have two presenta- 
tions, — one to two hundred a year, one to six. Both . 
livings are in our county, — North Devonshire, — as you 
probably know. The first is vacant. Would you like it ? " 

What with my lady's eyes, and what with the sudden- 
ness of this proposed gift, I was much confused. 

" I am sorry it is not the larger presentation," said my 
lady, rather coldly 5 "though I will not, Mr. Silverman, 
pay you the bad compliment of supposing that you are, 
because that would be mercenary, — and mercenary I am 
persuaded you are not." 

Said I, with my utmost earnestness, " Thank you, Lady 
Fareway, thank you, thank you ! I should be deeply hurt 
if I thought I bore the character." 

" Naturally," said my lady. " Always detestable, but 
particularly in a clergyman. You have not said whether 
you will like the living ? " 

With apologies for my remissness or indistinctness, I 
assured my lady that I accepted it most readily and grate- 
fully. I added that I hoped she would not estimate my 
appreciation of the generosity of her choice by my flow of 
words ; for I was npt a ready man in that respect when 
taken by surprise or touched at heart. 

" The affair is concluded," said my lady ; " concluded. 
You will find the duties very light, Mr. Silverman. Charm- 
ing house; charming little garden, orchard, and all that. 
You will be able to take pupils. By the by ! No : I will 
•return to the word afterwards. What was I going to men- 
tion, when it put me out ? " 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 469 

My lady stared at me, as if I knew. And I didn't 
know. And that perplexed me afresh. 

Said my lady, after some consideration, " Oh, of 
course ! How very dull of me. The last incumbent, — 
least mercenary man I ever saw, — in consideration of the 
duties being so light and the house so delicious, couldn't 
rest, he said, unless I permitted him to help me with my 
correspondence, account's, and various little things of that 
kind ; nothing in themselves, but which it worries a lady 
to cope with. Would Mr. Silverman also like to? — Or 
shall I?" — 

I hastened to say that my poor help would be always at 
her ladyship's service. 

" I am absolutely blessed," said my lady, casting up her 
eyes (and so taking them off of me for one moment), " in 
having to do with gentlemen who cannot endure an ap- 
proach -to the idea of being mercenary ! " She shivered 
at the word. " And now as to the pupil." 

" The ? " — I was quite at a loss. 

" Mr. Silverman, you have no idea what she is. She is," 
said my lady, laying her touch upon my coat-sleeve, "I 
do verily believe, the most 'extraordinary girl in this world. 
Already knows more Greek and Latin than Lady Jane 
Grey. And taught herself ! Has not yet, remember, de- 
rived a moment's advantage from Mr. Silverman's classical 
acquirements. To say nothing of mathematics, which she 
is bent upon becoming versed in, and in which (as I hear 
from my son and others) Mr. Silverman's reputation is so 
deservedly high ! " 

Under my lady's eyes, I must have lost the clew, I felt 
persuaded ; and yet I did not know where I Gould have 
dropped it. 

" Adelina," said my lady, " is my only daughter. If I 
did not feel quite convinced that I am not blinded by a 
mother's partiality ; unless I was absolutely sure that when 
you know her, Mr. Silverman, you will esteem it a high and 
unusual privilege to direct her studies, — I should intro- 
duce a mercenary element into this conversation, and ask 
you on what terms " — 

I entreated my lady to go no further. My lady saw 
that I was troubled, and did me the honor to comply with 
my request. 



470 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 



EIGHTH CHAPTER. . 

Evert thing in mental acquisition that her brother 
might have been, if he would, and every thing in all 
gracious charms and admirable qualities that no one but 
herself could be, — this was Adelina. » 

I will not expatiate upon her beauty : I will not ex- 
patiate upon her intelligence, her quickness of perception, 
her powers of memory, her sweet consideration, from the 
first moment, for the slow-paced tutor who ministered to 
her wonderful gifts. I was thirty then ; I am over sixty 
now : she is ever present to me in these hours as she was 
in those, bright and beautiful and young, wise and fanciful 
and good. 

When I cjiscovered that I loved her, how can I say ? In 
the first day? in the first week? in the first month? 
Impossible to trace. If I be (as I am) unable to represent 
to myself any previous period of my life as quite separable 
from her attracting power, how can I answer for this one 
detail? 

Whensoever I made the discovery, it laid a heavy bur- 
den on me. ^ And yet, comparing it with the far heavier 
burden that I afterwards took up, it does not seem to 
me now to have been very hard to bear. In the knowledge 
that I did love her, and that I should love her while my 
life lasted, and that I was ever to hide my secret deep in 
my own breast, and she was never to find it, there was 
a kind of sustaining joy or pride or comfort mingled with 
my pain. 

But later on, — say, a year later on, — when I made an- 
other discovery, then indeed my suffering and my struggle 
were strong. That other discovery was — 

These words will never see the light, if ever, until my 
heart is dust ; until her bright spirit has returned to ^ the 
regions of which, when imprisoned here, it surely retained 
some unusual glimpse of remembrance; until all the 
pulses that ever beat "around us shall have long been quiet; 
until all the fruits of all the tiny victories and defeats 
achieved in our little breasts shall have withered away. 
That discovery was, that she loved me. 

She may have enhanced my knowledge, and loved me 
for that ; she may have over-valued my discharge of duty 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 471 

to her, and loved me for that ; she may have refined upon a 
playful compassion which she would sometimes show for 
what she called my want of wisdom, according to the light 
of the world's dark lanterns, and loved me for that ; she 
may — she must — have confused the borrowed light of 
what I had only learned, with its brightness in its pure, 
original rays ; but she loved me at that time, and she made 
me know it. 

Pride of family and pride of wealth put me as far off 
from her in my lady's eyes as if I had been some domes- 
ticated creature of another kind. But they could not put me 
farther from her than I put myself "when I set my merits 
against hers. More than that. They could not put me, 
by millions of fathoms, half so low beneath her as I put 
myself when in imagination I took advantage of her noble 
trustfulness, took the fortune that I knew she must possess 
in her own right, and left her to find herself, in the zenith 
of her beauty and genius, bound to poor rusty, plodding 
me. 

No ! Worldliness should not enter here, at any cost. If 
I had tried to keep it out of other ground, how much 
harder was I bound to try to keep it from this sacred 
place. 

But there was something daring in her broad, generous 
character, that demanded at so delicate a crisis to be deli- 
cately and patiently addressed. After many and many 
a bitter night (oh, I found I could cry for reasons not 
purely physical, at this pass of my life !) I took my 
course. 

My lady had, in our first interview, unconsciously over- 
stated the accommodation of my pretty house. There was 
room in it for only one pupil. He was a young gentleman 
near coming of age, very well connected, but what is called 
a poor relation. His parents were dead. The charges of 
his living and reading with me were defrayed by an uncle ; 
and he and I were to do our utmost together for three 
years towards qualifying him to make his way. At this 
time he had entered into his second year with me. He 
was well-looking, clever, energetic, enthusiastic, bold ; in 
the best sense of the term, a thorough young Anglo-Saxon. 

I resolved to bring these two together. 



472 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 



NINTH CHAPTER. 

Said I, one night, when I had conquered myself, " Mr, 
Granville, " — Mr. Granville Wharton his name was, — "I 
doubt if you have ever yet so much as seen Miss Fareway." 

"Well, sir, " returned he, laughing, "you see her so 
much yourself, that you hardly leave another fellow a 
chance of seeing her." 

" I am her tutor, you know, " said I. 

And there the subject dropped for that time. But I so 
contrived as that they should come together shortly after- 
wards. I had previously so contrived as to keep them 
asunder ; for while I loved her, — I mean before I had deter- 
mined on my sacrifice, — a lurking jealousy of Mr. Gran- 
ville lay within my unworthy breast. 

It was quite an ordinary interview in the fareway. 
Park ; but they talked easily together for some time : like 
takes to like, and they had many points of resemblance. 
Said Mr. Granville to me, when he and I sat at our sup- 
per that night, "Miss Fareway is remarkably beautiful, 
sir, remarkably engaging. Don't you think so?" "I think 
so, " said I. And I stole a glance at him, and saw that he 
had reddened and was thoughtful. I remember it most 
vividly, because the mixed feeling of grave pleasure and 
acute pain that the slight circumstance caused me was the 
first of a long, long series of such mixed impressions' under 
which my hair turned slowly gray. 

I had not much need to feign to be subdued; but I 
counterfeited to be older than I was in all respects (Heaven 
knows! my heart being all too young the while), and 
feigned to be more of a recluse and bookworm than I had 
really become, and gradually set up more and more of a 
fatherly manner towards Adelina. Likewise I made my 
tuition less imaginative than before ; separated myself 
from my poets and philosophers; was careful to present 
them in their own light, and me, their lowly servant, in 
my own shade. Moreover, in the matter of apparel I was 
equally mindful: not that I had ever been dapper that 
way ; but that I was slovenly now. 

As T depressed myself with one hand, so did I labor to 
raise Mr. Granville with the other ; directing his attention 
to such subjects as I too well knew most interested her, and 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 473 

fashioning him (do not deride or misconstrue the expres- 
ion, unknown reader of this writing; for I have suffered!) 
into a greater resemblance to myself in my solitary one 
strong aspect. And gradually, gradually, as I saw him 
take more and more to these thrown-out lures of mine, 
then did I come to know better and better that love was 
drawing him on, and was drawing her from me. 

So passed more than another year ; every day a year in 
its number of my mixed impressions of grave pleasure and 
acute pain ; and then these two, being of age and free to 
act legally for themselves, came before me hand in hand (my 
hair being now quite white), and entreated me that I would 
unite them together. " And indeed, dear tutor, " said 
Adelina, "it is but consistent in you that you should do 
this thing for us, seeing that we should never have spoken 
together that first time but for you, and that but for you we 
could ne"ver have met so often afterwards." The whole of 
which was literally true ; for I had availed myself of my 
many business attendances on, and conferences with, my 
lady, to take Mr. Granville to the house, and leave him in 
the outer room with Adelina. 

I knew that my lady would object to such a marriage for 
her daughter, or to any marriage that was other than an 
exchange of her for stipulated lands, goods, and moneys. 
But looking on the two, and seeing with full eyes that they 
were both young and beautiful; and knowing that they 
were alike in the tastes and acquirements that will outlive 
youth and beauty ; and considering that Adelina had a for- 
tune now, in her own keeping; and considering further 
that Mr. Granville, though for the present poor, was of a 
good family that had never lived in a cellar in Preston; 
and believing that their love would endure, neither having 
any great discrepancy to find out in the other, — I told 
them of my readiness to do this thing which Adelina asked 
of her dear tutor, and to send them forth, husband and 
wife, into the shining world with golden gates that awaited 
them. 

It was on a summer morning, that I rose before the sun 
to compose myself for the crowning of my work with this 
end ; and my dwelling being near to the sea, I walked 
down to the rocks on the shore, in order that I might be- 
hold the sun rise in his majesty. 

The tranquillity upon the deep, and on the firmament, 

40* 



474 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 

the orderly withdrawal of the stars, the calm promise of 
coming day, the rosy suffusion of the sky and waters, the 
ineffable splendor that then burst forth, attuned my mind 
afresh after the discords of the night. Methought that all 
I looked on said to me, and that all I heard in the sea and 
and in the air said to me, " Be comforted, mortal, that thy 
life is so short. Our preparation for what is to follow has 
endured, and shall endure, for unimaginable ages." 

I married them. I knew that my hand was cold when I 
placed it on their hands clasped together; but the words 
with which I had to accompany the action I could say 
without faltering, and I was at peace. 

They being well away from my house and from the place 
after our simple breakfast, the time was come when I must 
do what I had pledged myself to them that I would do, — 
break the intelligence to my lady. 

I went up to the house, and found my lady in her ordi- • 
nary business-room. She happened to have an unusual 
amount of commissions to intrust to me that day ; and she 
had filled my hands with papers before I could originate a 
word. 

" My lady," I then began, as I stood beside her table. 

" Why, what's the matter ? " she said quickly, looking up. 

" Not much, I would fain hope, after you shall have pre- 
pared yourself, and considered a little." 

"Prepared myself; and considered a little! You appear 
to have prepared yourself but indifferently, any how, Mr. 
Silverman." This mighty scornfully, as I experienced my 
usual embarrassment under her stare. 

Said I, in self-extenuation once for all, "Lady Fare- 
way, I have but to say for myself that I have tried to do 
my duty." 

"For yourself?" repeated my lady. "Then there are 
others concerned, I see. Who are they ? " 

I was about to answer, when she made towards the bell 
with a dart that stopped me, and said, "Why, where is 
Adelina?" 

" Forbear ! be calm, my lady. I married her this morn- 
ing to Mr. Granville Wharton." 

She set her lips, looked more intently at me than ever, 
raised her right hand, and smote me hard upon the cheek. 

" Give me back those papers ! give me back those pa- 
pers ! " She tore them out of my hands, and tossed them 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 475 

on her tabte. Then seating herself defiantly in her great 
chair, and folding her arms, she stabbed me to the heart 
with the unlooked-for reproach, " You worldly wretch ! " 

" Worldly ? " I cried. « Worldly ? " 

" This, if you please, " — she went on with supreme scorn, 
pointing me out as if there were some one there to see, — 
" this, if you please, is the disinterested scholar, with not a 
design beyond his books ! This, if you please, is the sim- 
ple creature whom any one could overreach in a bargain ! 
This, if you please, is Mr. Silverman ! Not of this world ; 
not he ! He has too much simplicity for this world's cun- 
ning. He has too much singleness of purpose to be a match 
for this world's double-dealing. What did he give you for 
it?" 

" For what ? And who ? " 

" How much," she asked, bending forward in her great 
chair, ancKnsultingly tapping the fingers of her right hand 
on the palm of her left, — " how much does Mr. Granville 
Wharton pay you for getting him Adelina's money? 
What is the amount of your percentage upon Adelina's 
fortune ? What were the terms of the agreement that you 
proposed to this boy when you, the Rev. George Silverman, 
licensed to marry, engaged to put him in possession of 
this girl ? You made good terms for yourself, whatever 
they were. He would stand a poor chance against your 
keenness." 

Bewildered, horrified, stunned by this cruel perversion, 
I could not speak. But I trust that I looked innocent, 
being so. 

" Listen to me, shrewd hypocrite," said my lady, whose 
anger increased as she gave it utterance ; " attend to my 
words, you cunning schemer; who have carried this plot 
through with such a practised double face that I have 
never suspected you. I had my projects for my daughter; 
projects for family connection; projects for fortune. You 
have thwarted them, and overreached me ; but I am not one 
to be thwarted and overreached -without retaliation. Do you 
mean to hold this living another month ? " 

"Do you deem it possible, Lady Fareway, that I can 
hold it another hour, under your injurious words ? " 

" Is it resigned, then ? " 

" It was mentally resigned, my lady, some minutes ago." 

" Don't equivocate, sir. Is it resigned ? " 



476 GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 

" Unconditionally and entirely ; and I would that I had 
never, never come near it ! n 

"A cordial response from me to that wish, Mr. Silver- 
man ! But take this with you, sir. If you had not re- 
signed it, I would have had you deprived of it. And 
though you have resigned it, you will not get quit of me as 
easily as you think for. I will pursue you with this story. 
I will make this nefarious conspiracy of yours, for money, 
known. You have made money by it, but you have at the 
same time made an enemy by it. You will take good care 
that the money sticks to you; I will take good care that 
the enemy sticks to you." 

Then said I finally, " Lady Fareway, I think my heart 
is broken. Until I came into this room just now, the 
possibility of such mean wickedness as you have imputed 
to me never dawned upon my thoughts. Your suspi- 
cions " — 

" Suspicions ! Pah ! " said she indignantly. " Certainties." 

" Your certainties, my lady, as you call them, your sus- 
picions as I call them, are cruel, unjust, wholly devoid of 
foundation in fact. I can declare no more ; except that I 
have not acted for my own profit or my own pleasure. I 
have not in this proceeding considered myself. Once again, 
I think my heart is broken. If I have unwittingly done 
any wrong with a righteous motive, that is some penalty 
to pay." 

She received this with another and a more indignant 
a Pah !" and I made my way out of her room (I think I 
felt my way out with my hands, although my eyes were 
open), almost suspecting that my voice had a repulsive 
sound, and that I was a repulsive object. 

There was a great stir made, the bishop was appealed to, 
I received a severe reprimand, and narrowly escaped suspen- 
sion. For years a cloud hung over me, and my name was 
tarnished. But my heart did not break, if a broken heart 
involves death ; for I lived through it. 

They stood by me, Adelina and her husband, through it 
all. Those who had known me at college, and even most 
of those who had only known me there by reputation, stood 
by me too. Little by little, the belief widened that I was 
not capable of what was laid to my charge. At length I 
was presented to a college-living in a sequestered place, 
and there I now pen my explanation. I pen it at my open 



GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 477 

window in the summer-time, before me, lying in the church- 
yard, equal resting-place for sound hearts, wounded hearts, 
and broken hearts. I pen it for the relief of my own mind, 
not foreseeing whether or no it will ever have a reader. 



SKETCHES OP YOUNG COUPLES. 

479 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES; 

WITH AN 

URGENT REMONSTRANCE TO THE GENTLEMEN OF ENGLAND 

(BEING bachelors and widowers) 

ON THE PRESENT ALARMING CRISIS. 



To the Gentlemen of England (being bachelors or widoiv- 
ers), the remonstrance of their faithful felloiv- 



Sheweth, — 

That Her Most Gracious Majesty, Victoria, by tine grace 
of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ire- 
land Queen, Defender of the Faith, did, on the 23d day of 
November last past, declare and pronounce to Her Most 
Honorable Privy Council, Her Majesty's Most Gracious in- 
tention of entering into the bonds of wedlock ; 

That Her Most Gracious Majesty, in so making known 
Her Most Gracious intention to Her Most Honorable Privy 
Council as aforesaid, did use and employ the words, " It is 
my intention to ally myself in marriage with Prince Albert 
of Saxe Coburg and Gotha ; " 

That the present is Bissextile, or Leap Year, in which 
it is held and considered lawful for any lady to offer and 
submit proposals of marriage to any gentleman, and to en- 
force and insist upon acceptance of the same, under pain of 
a certain fine or penalty, — to wit, one silk or satin dress of 
the first quality, to be chosen by the lady, and paid (or owed) 
for by the gentleman ; 

41 481 



482 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

That these and other the horrors and dangers with which 
the said Bissextile, or Leap Year, threatens the gentlemen 
of England on every occasion of its periodical return, have 
been greatly aggravated and augmented by the terms of 
Her Majesty's said most gracious communication, which 
have filled the heads of divers young ladies in this Realm 
with certain new ideas destructive to the peace of mankind, 
that never entered their imagination before ; 

That a case has occurred in CamberwelL, in which a 
young lady informed Jier papa that " she intended to ally 
herself in marriage " with Mr. Smith of Stepney, and that 
another, and a very distressing case, has occurred at Totten- 
ham, in which a young lady not only stated her intention 
of allying herself in marriage with her Cousin John, but, 
taking violent possession of her said cousin, actually married 
him ; 

That similar outrages are of constant occurrence, not 
only in the capital and its neighborhood, but throughout 
the kingdom, and that unless the excited female populace 
be speedily checked and restrained in their lawless proceed- 
ings, most deplorable results must ensue therefrom, — among 
which may be anticipated a most alarming increase in the 
population of the country, with which no efforts of the 
agricultural or manufacturing interest can possibly keep 
pace; 

That there is strong reason to suspect the existence of a 
most extensive plot, conspiracy, or design, secretly con- 
trived by vast numbers of single ladies in the United King- 
dom of Great Britain and Ireland, and now extending its 
ramifications in every quarter of the land, — the object and 
intent of which plainly appears to be the holding and 
solemnizing of an enormous and unprecedented number of 
marriages, on the day on which the nuptials of Her said 
Most Gracious Majesty are performed ; 

That such plot, conspiracy, or design strongly savors of 
Popery, as tending to the discomfiture of the clergy of the 
Established Church, by entailing upon them great mental 
and physical exhaustion, and that such Popish plots are 
fomented and encouraged by her Majesty's Ministers, which 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 483 

clearly appears, not only from her Majesty's principal 
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs traitorously getting 
married while holding office under the Crown, but from 
Mr. O'Connell having been heard to declare and avow, that, 
if he had a daughter to marry, she should be married on 
the same day as her said Most Gracious Majesty ; 

That such arch plots, conspiracies, and designs, besides 
being fraught with danger to the Established Church, and 
(consequently) to the State, cannot fail to bring ruin and 
bankruptcy upon a large class of Her Majesty's subjects, 
as a great and sudden increase in the number of married 
men, occasioning the comparative desertion (for a time) of 
taverns, hotels, billiard-rooms, and gaming-houses, will 
deprive the proprietors of their accustomed profits and re- 
turns, — and in further proof of the depth and baseness of 
such designs, it may be here observed, that all proprietors 
of taverns, hotels, billiard-rooms, and gaming-houses are 
(especially the last) solemnly devoted to the Protestant 
religion : 

For all these reasons, and many others of no less gravity 
and import, an urgent appeal is made to the gentle- 
men c-f England (being bachelors or- widowers) to 
take immediate steps for convening a public meet- 
ing to consider of the best and surest means of 
averting the dangers with which they are threatened 
by the recurrence of Bissextile, or Leap Year, and 
the additional sensation created among single ladies 
by the terms of Her Majesty's most gracious declara- 
tion; to take measures, without delay, for resisting 
the^ said single Ladies, and counteracting their evil 
designs ^ and to pray Her Majesty to dismiss her pres- 
ent ministers, and to summon to her councils those 
distinguished gentlemen in various honorable profes- 
sions, who, by insulting on all occasions the only lady 
in England who can be insulted with safety, have given 
a sufficient guaranty to Her Majesty's loving subjects 
that they, at least, are qualified to. make war with 
women, and are already expert in the use of those 
weapons which are common to the lowest and most 
abandoned of the sex. 






484 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 



THE YOUNG COUPLE. 

Thekb is to be a wedding this morning at the corner | 
house in the terrace. The pastry-cook's people have been 
there half a dozen times already; all day yesterday there -jj 
was a great stir and bustle, and they were up this morningl 
as soon as it was light. ' Miss Emma Fielding is going to 
be married to young Mr. Harvey. 

Heaven alone can tell in what bright colors this marriage: 
is painted upon the mind of the little housemaid at number 
six, who has hardly slept a wink all night with thinking of 
it, and now stands on the uhswept door-steps leaning upon 
her broom, and looking wistfully towards the enchanted 
house. Nothing short of Omniscience can divine what 
visions of the baker, or the greengrocer, or the smart and i 
most insinuating butterman, are flitting across her mind,— 
what thoughts of how she would look on such an occasion, 
if she were a lady ; of how she would dress, if she were only 
a bride ; of how cook would dress, being bridesmaid, con- 
jointly with her sister " in place " at Fulham, and how the 
clergyman, deeming them so many ladies, would be quite 
humbled and respectful. What day-dreams of hope and 
happiness; of life being one perpetual holiday, with no 
master and no mistress to grant and withhold it; of every I 
Sunday being ,a Sunday out; of pure freedom as to curifl 
and ringlets, and no obligation to hide fine heads of hair ir;i 
ca p Sj — w ith pictures of happiness, vast and immense tcl 
her, but utterly ridiculous to us, — bewilder the brain of th< 
little housemaid at number six, all called into existence b} 
the wedding at the corner ! 

We smile at such things ; and so we should, though per 
haps for a better reason than commonly presents itself. I 
should be pleasant to us to know that there are notions oi 
happiness so moderate and limited, since upon those wh< 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 485 

entertain them happiness and lightness of heart are very 
easily bestowed. 

But the little housemaid is awakened from her revery ; 
I for forth from the door of the magical corner house there 
I runs towards her, all fluttering 1 in smart new dress and 
I streaming ribbons, her friend, Jane Adams, who comes all 
| out of breath to redeem a solemn promise of taking her in, 
: under cover of the confusion, to see the breakfast-table spread 
i forth in state, and — sight of sights ! — her young mistress 
ready dressed for church. 

And there, in good truth, when they have stolen up stairs 
on tiptoe, and edged themselves in at the chamber-door, — 
there is Miss Emma " looking like the sweetest picter," in a 
white chip-bonnet and orange-flower, and all other elegances 
becoming a bride (with the make, shape, and quality of 
every article of which the girl is perfectly familiar in one 
moment, and never forgets to her dying day) ; and there is 
Miss Emma's mamma in tears, and Miss Emma's papa com- 
forting her, and saying how that of course she has been 
long looking forward to this, and how happy she ought to 
be ; and there, too, is Miss Emma's sister with her arms 
around her neck, and the other bridesmaid, all smiles and 
* tears, quieting the children, who would cry more but that 
they are so finely dressed, and yet sob for fear sister Emma 
should be taken away, — and it is all so affecting that the 
two servant-girls cry more than anybody ; and Jane Adams, 
sitting down upon the stairs, when they have crept away, 
declares that her legs tremble so that she don't know what 
to do, and that she will say for Miss Emma, that she never 
had a hasty word from her, and that she does hope and pray 
she may be happy. 

But Jane soon comes round again ; and then surely there 
never was any thing like the breakfast-table, glittering with 
plate and china, and set out with flowers and sweets, and 
long-necked bottles, in the most sumptuous and dazzling 
manner. In the centre, too, is the mighty charm, — the 
cake, glistening with frosted sugar, and garnished beauti- 
ful. They agree that there ought to be a little Cupid under 
one of the barley-sugar temples, or at least two hearts and 
an arrow ; but with this exception, there is nothing to wish 
for, and a table could not be handsomer. As they arrive at 
this conclusion, who should come in but Mr. John, to whom 
Jane says that it's only Anne from •number six; and John 

41* 



486 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

says he knows, for he's often winked his eye down the area, 
which causes Anne to blush and look confused. She is 
going away, indeed, when Mr. John will have it that she 
must drink a glass of wine ; and he says, " Never mind it's 
being early in the morning, it won't hurt her : so they shut 
the door, and pour out the wine ; and Anne, drinking Jane's 
health, and adding, "And here's wishing you yours, Mr. 
John," drinks it in a great many sips, — Mr. John all the 
time making jokes appropriate to the occasion. At last 
Mr. John, who has waxed bolder by degrees, pleads the 
usage at weddings, and claims the privilege of a kiss, 
which he obtains after a great scuffle ; and footsteps being 
now heard on the stairs, they disperse suddenly. 

By this time a carriage had driven up to convey the bride 
to church ; and Anne of number six, prolonging the process 
of " cleaning her door," has the satisfaction of beholding 
the bride and bridesmaids, and the papa and mamma, hurry 
into the same, and drive rapidly off. Nor is this all : for 
soon other carriages begin to arrive with a posse of company 
all beautifully dressed, at whom she could stand and gaze 
forever ; but having something else to do, is compelled to 
take one last long look, and shut the street-door. 

And now the company have gone down to breakfast, and 4 
tears have given place to smiles ; for all the corks are out of 
the long-necked bottles, and their contents are disappearing 
rapidly. Miss Emma's papa is at the top of the table ; 
Miss Emma's mamma at the bottom ; and beside the latter 
are Miss Emma herself and her husband, — admitted on all 
hands to be the handsomest and most interesting young 
couple ever known. All down both sides of the table, too, 
are various young ladies, beautiful to see, and various young 
gentlemen who seem to think so ; and there, in a post of 
honor, is an unmarried aunt of Miss Emma, reported to 
possess unheard-of riches, and to have expressed vast testa- 
mentary intentions respecting her favorite niece and new 
nephew. This lady has been very liberal and generous 
already, as the jewels worn by the bride abundantly testify: 
but that is nothing to what she means to do, or even to what 
she has done ; for she put herself in close communication 
with the dressmaker three months ago, and prepared a 
wardrobe (with some articles worked by her own hands) fit 
for a princess. People may call her an old maid, and so 
she may be; but she is neither cross nor ugly for all that: 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 487 

on the contrary, she is very cheerful and pleasant-looking, 
and very kind and tender-hearted ; which is no matter of 
surprise, except to those who yield to popular prejudices 
without thinking why, and will never grow wiser and never 
know better. 

Of all the company, though, none are more pleasant to 
behold, or better pleased with themselves, than two young 
children, who, in honor of the day, have seats among the 
guests. Of these, one is a little fellow of six or eight years 
old, brother to the bride ; and the other a girl of the same 
age, or something younger, whom he calls "his wife." The 
real bride and bridegroom are not more devoted than they ; 
he all love and attention, and she all blushes and fondness, 
toying with a little bouquet which he gave her this morn- 
ing, and placing the scattered rose-leaves in her bosom with 
Nature's own coquettishness. They have dreamt of each 
other in, their quiet dreams, these children ; and their little 
hearts have been nearly broken when the absent one has 
been dispraised in jest. When will there come in after 
life a passion so earnest, generous, and true as theirs? 
What, even in its gentlest realities, can have the grace and 
charm that hover round such fairy lovers ? 

By this time the merriment and happiness of the feast 
have gained their height. Certain ominous looks begin to 
be exchanged between the bridesmaids ; and somehow it gets • 
whispered about that the carriage which is to take the 
young couple has arrived. Such members of the party as 
are most disposed to prolong its enjoyments affect to con- 
sider this a false alarm ; but it turns out too true, being 
speedily confirmed, first by the retirement of the bride and 
a select file of intimates who are to prepare her for the 
journey, and secondly by the withdrawal of the ladies gen- 
erally. To this there ensues a particularly awkward pause, 
in which everybody essays to be facetious, and nobody suc- 
ceeds ; at length the bridegroom makes a mysterious disap- 
pearance in obedience to some equally mysterious signal, 
and the table is deserted. 

Now, for at least six weeks last past, it has been solemnly 
devised and settled that the young people should go away 
in secret ; but they no sooner appear without the door than 
the drawing-room windows are blocked up with ladies wav- 
ing their handkerchiefs and kissing their hands, and the 
dining-room panes with gentlemen's faces beaming farewell 



488 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

in every queer variety of its expression. The hall and steps 
are crowded with servants in white favors, mixed up with 
particular friends and relations who have darted out to say 
good-by; and foremost in the group are the tiny lovers, 
arm in arm, thinking, with fluttering hearts, what happiness 
it would be to dash away together in that gallant coach, and 
never part again. 

The bride has barely time for one hurried glance at her 
old home, when the steps rattle, the door slams, the horses 
clatter on the pavement, and they have left it far away. 

A knot of women-servants still remain clustered in the 
hall, whispering among themselves ; and there, of course, is 
Anne from number six, who has made another escape on 
some plea or other, and been an admiring witness of the 
departure. There are two points on which Anne expatiates 
over and over again, without the smallest appearance of 
fatigue, "or intending to leave off: one is, that she " never 
see in all her life such a — oh, such a angel of a gentleman 
as Mr. Harvey ! " and the other, that she " can't tell how 
it is, but it don't seem a bit like a work-a-day, or a Sunday 
neither, — ^ it's all so unsettled and unregular." 



THE FORMAL COUPLE. 

The formal couple are the most prim, cold, immovable, 
and unsatisfactory people on the face of the earth. Their 
faces, voices, dress, house, furniture, walk, and manner are 
all the essence of formality, unrelieved by one redeeming 
touch of frankness, heartiness, or nature. 

Every thing with the formal couple resolves itself into a 
matter of form. They don't call upon you on your account, 
but their own ; not to see how you are, but to show how 
they are ; it is not a ceremony to do honor to you, but to 
themselves ; not due to your position, but to theirs. If one 
of a friend's children die, the formal couple are as sure and 
punctual in sending to the house as the undertaker ; if a 
friend's family be increased, the monthly nurse is not more 
attentive than they. The formal couple, in fact, joyfully 
seize all occasions of testifying their good breeding and 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 489 

precise observance of the little usages of society ; and for 
you, who are the means to this end, they care as much as a 
man does for the tailor who has enabled him to cut a figure, 
or a woman for the milliner who has assisted her to a con- 
quest. 

Having an extensive connection among that kind of 
people who make acquaintances and eschew friends, the 
formal gentleman attends from time to time a great many 
funerals, to which he is formally invited, and to which he 
formally goes, as returning a call for the last time. Here 
his deportment is of the most faultless description; he 
knows the exact pitch of voice it is proper to assume, the 
sombre look he ought to wear, the melancholy tread which 
should be his gait for the day. He is perfectly acquainted 
with all the dreary courtesies to be observed in a mourning- 
coach : knows when to sigh, and when to hide his nose in 
the white handkerchief; and looks into the grave and 
shakes his head when the ceremony is concluded, with the 
sad formality of a mute. 

"What kind of a funeral was it?" says the formal lady, 
when he returns home. " Oh," replies the formal gentle- 
man, " there never was such a gross and disgusting impro- 
priety ! there were no feathers." - — " No feathers ! " cries the 
lady, as if on wings of black feathers dead people fly to 
heaven, and, lacking them, they must of necessity go else- 
where. Her husband shakes his head, and further adds, 
that they had seed-cake instead of plum-cake, and that it 
was all white wine. " All white wine ! " exclaims his wife. 
" Nothing but sherry and madeira," says the husband. 
" What ! no port ? " — "Not a drop." No port, no plums, 
and no feathers ! " You will recollect, my dear," says the 
formal lady, in a voice of stately reproof, " that when wo 
first met this poor man who is now dead and gone, and he 
took that very strange course of addressing me at dinner 
without being previously introduced, I ventured to express 
my opinion that the family were quite ignorant of etiquette, 
and very imperfectly acquainted with the decencies of life. 
You have now had a good opportunity of judging for your- 
self; and all I have to sayis, that I trust you will never go 
to a funeral there again." — "My dear," replies the formal 
gentleman, "I never will." So the informal deceased is 
cut in his grave ; and the formal couple, when they tell the 
story of the funeral, shake their heads, and wonder what 



490 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

some people's feelings are made of, and what their notions 
of propriety can be ! 

If the formal people have a family (which they some- 
times have), they are not children, but little, pale, sour, 
sharp-nosed men and women ; and so exquisitely brought 
up, that they might be very old dwarfs for any thing that 
appeareth to the contrary. Indeed, they are so acquainted 
with forms and conventionalities, and conduct themselves 
with such strict decorum, that to see the little girl break a 
looking-glass in some wild outbreak, or the little boy kick 
his parents, would be to any visitor an unspeakable relief 
and consolation. 

The formal couple are always sticklers for what is rigidly 
proper, and have a great readiness in detecting hidden im- 
propriety of speech or thought, which by less scrupulous 
people would be wholly unsuspected. Thus, if they pay a 
visit to the theatre, they sit all night in a perfect agony 
lest any thing improper or immoral should proceed from the 
stage ; and if any thing should happen to be said which 
admits of a double construction, they never fail to take it 
up directly, and to express by their looks the great outrage 
which their feelings have sustained. Perhaps this is their 
chief reason for absenting themselves almost entirely from 
places of public amusement. They go sometimes to the 
exhibition of the Royal Academy; but that is often 
more shocking than the stage itself, and the formal lady 
thinks that it really is high time Mr. Etty was prosecuted 
and made a public example of. 

We made one at a christening party not long since, 
where there was amongst the guests a formal couple, who 
suffered the acutest torture from certain jokes, incidental to 
such an occasion, cut — and very likely dried also — by 
one of the godfathers, a red-faced, elderly gentleman, who, 
being highly popular with the rest of the company, had it 
all his own way, and was in great spirits. It was at' sup- 
per-time that this gentleman came out in full force. We — 
being of a grave and quiet demeanor — had been chosen to 
escort the formal lady down stairs, and, sitting beside her, 
had a favorable opportunity of observing her emotions. 

We have a shrewd suspicion, that in the very beginning, 
and in the first blush — literally the first blush — of the 
matter, the formal lady had not felt quite certain whether 
the being present at such a ceremony, and encouraging, as 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 491 

it were, the public exhibition of a baby, was not an act in- 
volving some degree of indelicacy and Impropriety; but 
certain we are, that when that baby's health was drunk, 
and allusions were made, by a gray-headed gentleman pro- 
posing it, to the time when he had dandled in his arms the 
young Christian's mother, — certain we are, that then the 
formal lady took the alarm, and recoiled from the old gen- 
tleman as from a hoary profligate. Still she bore it ; she 
fanned herself with an indignant air, but still she bore it. 
A comic song was sung, involving a confession from some 
imaginary gentleman that he had kissed a female, and yet 
the formal lady bore it. But when at last, the health of 
the godfather before mentioned being drunk, the godfather 
rose to return thanks, and in the course of his observations 
darkly hinted at babies yet unborn, and even contemplated 
the possibility of the subject of that festival having brothers 
and sisters, the formal lady could endure no more; but 
bowing slightly round, and sweeping haughtily past the 
offender, left the room in tears, under the protection of the 
formal gentleman. 



THE LOV'ING COUPLE. 

There cannot be a better practical illustration of the 
wise saw and ancient incident, that there may be too much 
of a good thing, than is presented by a loving couple. Un- 
doubtedly it is meet and proper, that two persons joined 
together in holy matrimony should be loving, and unques- 
tionably it is pleasant to know and see that they are so ; 
but there is a time for all things, and the couple who hap- 
pen to be always in a loving state before company are well 
nigh intolerable. 

And in taking up this position we would have it dis- 
tinctly understood, that we do not seek alone the sympathy 
of bachelors, in whose objection to loving couples we recog- 
nize interested motives and personal considerations. We 
grant that to that unfortunate class of society there may be 
something very irritating, tantalizing, and provoking, in 
being compelled to witness those gentle endearments and 
chaste interchanges which to loving couples are quite the 



492 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

ordinary business of life. But while we recognize the 
natural character of the prejudice to which these unhappy 
men are subject, we can neither receive their biassed evi- 
dence, nor address ourself to their inflained and angered 
minds. Dispassionate experience is our only guide ; and 
in these moral essays we seek no less to reform hymeneal 
offenders than to hold out a timely warning to all rising 
couples, and even to those who have not yet set forth upon 
their pilgrimage towards the matrimonial altar. 

Let all couples, present or to come, therefore, profit by 
the example of Mr. and Mrs. Leaver, themselves a loving 
couple in the first degree. 

Mr. and Mrs. Leaver are pronounced by Mrs. Starling, a 
widow lady who lost her husband when she was young, and 
lost herself about the same time ( for by .her own count 
she has never since grown five years older), to be a per- 
fect model of wedded felicity. " You would suppose/ 7 says 
the romantic lady, "that they were lovers only just now 
engaged. Never was such happiness ! They are so tender, 
so affectionate, so attached to each other, so enamoured, that 
positively nothing can be more charming ! " 

" Augusta, my soul," says Mr. Leaver. " Augustus, my 
life," replies Mrs. Leaver. " Sing some little ballad, 
darling," quoth Mr. Leaver. " I couldn't, indeed, dearest," 
returns Mrs. Leaver. "Do, my dove," says Mr. Leaver. 
" I couldn't possibly, my love," replies Mrs. Leaver ; " and 
it's very naughty of you to ask me." — "Naughty, darling ! " 
cries Mr. Leaver. " Yes, very naughty, and very cruel," re- 
turns Mrs. Leaver ; " for you know I have a sore throat, and 
that to sing would give me great pain. You're a monster, 
and I hate you. Go away ! " Mrs. Leaver has said " Go 
away," because Mr. Leaver has tapped her under the chin : 
Mr. Leaver not doing as he is bid, but, on the contrary, sit- 
ting down beside her, Mrs. Leaver slaps Mr. Leaver, and 
Mr. Leaver in return slaps Mrs. Leaver ; and, it being now 
time for all persons present to look the other way, they look 
the other way, and hear a still small sound as of kissing, at 
which Mrs. Starling is thoroughly enraptured, and whispers 
her neighbor that if all married couples were like that, 
what a heaven this earth would be ! 

The loving couple are at home when this occurs, and 
maybe only three or four friends are present ; but, unaccus- 
tomed to reserve upon this interesting point, they are pretty 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 493 

much the same abroad. Indeed, upon some occasions, such 
as a picnic or a water-party, their lovingness is even more 
developed, as we had an opportunity last summer of observ- 
ing in person. 

There was a great water-party made up to go to Twick- 
enham and dine, and afterwards dance in an empty villa by 
the river-side, hired expressly for the purpose. Mr. and 
Mrs. Leaver were of the company ; and it was our fortune 
to have a seat in the same boat, which was an eight-oared 
galley, manned by amateurs, with a blue-striped awning of 
the same pattern as their Guernsey shirts, and a dingy red 
flag of the same shade as the whiskers of the stroke-oar. 
A coxswain being appointed, and all other matters ad- 
justed, the eight gentlemen threw themselves into strong 
paroxysms, and pulled up with the tide, stimulated by the 
compassionate remarks of the ladies, who one and all ,ex- 
claimed that it seemed an immense exertion, — as indeed it 
did. At first we raced the other boat, which came along- 
side in gallant style ; but this being found an unpleasant 
amusement, as giving rise to a great quantity of splashing, 
and rendering the cold pies and other viands very moist, it 
was unanimously voted down, and we were suffered to shoot 
ahead, while the second boat followed ingloriously in our 
wake. 

It was at this time that we first recognized Mr. Leaver. 
There were two firemen-watermen in the boat, lying by 
until somebody was exhausted ; and one of them, who had 
taken upon himself the direction of affairs, was heard to 
cry in a gruff voice, "Pull away, number two; give it 
her, number two ; take a long reach, number two ; now, 
number two, sir! think you're winning a boat." The 
greater part of the company had no doubt begun to wonder 
which of the striped Guernseys it might be that stood in 
need of such encouragement, when a stilled shriek from 
Mrs. Leaver confirmed the doubtful and informed the igno- 
rant; and Mr. Leaver, still further disguised in a straw 
hat and no neckcloth, was observed to be in a fearful per- 
spiration, and failing visibly. ]STor was the general conster- 
nation diminished at this instant by the same gentleman (in 
the performance of an accidental aquatic feat, termed 
" catching a crab ,? ) plunging suddenly backward, and dis- 
playing nothing of himself to the company but two vio- 
lently struggling legs. Mrs. Leaver shrieked again several 
±2 



494 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

times, and cried piteously, "Is he dead? Tell me the 
worst is he dead ? " 

Now, a moment's reflection might have convinced the 
loving wife, that, unless her husband were endowed with 
some most surprising powers of muscular action, he never 
could be dead while he kicked so hard; but still Mrs. 
Leaver cried, " Is he dead ? is he dead ? " and still every- 
body else cried, "JSTo, no, no," — until such time as Mr. 
Leaver was replaced in a sitting posture, and his oar 
(which had been going through all kinds of wrong-headed 
performances on its own account) was once more put in his 
hand by the exertions of the two firemen-watermen. Mrs. 
Leaver then exclaimed, "Augustus, my child, come to 
me ; " and Mr. Leaver said, " Augusta, my love, compose 
yourself : I am not injured." But Mrs. Leaver cried again 
more piteously than before, "Augustus, my child, come 
to me ; " and now the company generally, who seemed to 
be apprehensive, that, if Mr. Leaver remained where he 
was, he might contribute more than his proper share 
towards the drowning of the party, disinterestedly took 
part with Mrs. Leaver, and said he really ought to go, and 
that he was not strong enough for such violent exercise, 
and ought never to have undertaken it. Reluctantly Mr. 
Leaver went and laid himself down at Mrs. Leaver's feet ; 
and Mrs. Leaver, stooping over him, said, "O Augustus ! 
how could you terrify me so?" and Mr. Leaver said, 
" Augusta, my sweet, I never meant to terrify you ; " and 
Mrs. Leaver said, " You are faint, my dear ; " and Mr. 
Leaver said, " I am rather so, my love ; " and they were 
very loving indeed under Mrs. Leaver's veil, until at length 
Mr. Leaver came forth again, and pleasantly asked if he 
had not heard something said about bottled stout and 
sandwiches. 

Mrs. Starling, who was one of the party, was perfectly 
delighted with this scene, and frequently murmured half 
aside, " What a loving couple you are ! " or, " How delight- 
ful it is to see man and wife so happy together ! " To us 
she was quite poetical (for we are a kind of cousins) ; 
observing that hearts beating in unison like that made life 
a paradise of sweets, and that, when kindred creatures* 
were drawn together by sympathies so fine and delicate, 
what more than mortal happiness did not our souls partake. 
To all this we answered, " Certainly," or " Very true," or 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 495 

merely sighed, as the case might be. At every new act of 
the loving couple, the widow's admiration broke out afresh ; 
and when Mrs. Leaver would not permit Mr. Leaver to 
keep his hat off, lest the sun should strike to his head, and 
give him a brain-fever, Mrs. Starling actually shed tears, 
and said it reminded her of Adam and Eve. 

The loving couple were thus loving all the way to Twick- 
enham : but when we arrived there (by which time the 
amateur crew looked very thirsty and vicious) they were 
more playful than ever; for Mrs. Leaver threw stones at Mr. 
Leaver, and Mr. Leaver ran after Mrs. Leaver on the grass, 
in a most innocent and enchanting manner. At dinner, too, 
Mr. Leaver would steal Mrs. Leaver's tongue, and Mrs. 
Leaver ivould retaliate upon Mr. Leaver's fowl ; and, when 
Mrs. Leaver was going to take some lobster-salad, Mr. 
Leaver wouldn't let her have any, sajdng that it made her 
ill, and she was always sorry for it afterwards, which 
afforded Mrs. Leaver an opportunity of pretending to be 
cross, and showing many other prettinesses. But this was 
merely the smiling surface of their loves, not the mighty 
depths of the stream, down to which the company, to say 
the truth, dived rather unexpectedly, from the following 
accident : It chanced that Mr. Leaver took upon himself 
to propose the bachelors who had first originated the notion 
of that entertainment ; in doing which He affected to regret 
that he was no longer of their body himself, and pretended 
grievously to lament his fallen state. This Mrs. Leaver's 
feelings could not brook, even in jest; and consequently, 
exclaiming aloud, " He loves me not, he loves me not ! " 
she fell in a very pitiable state into the arms of Mrs. Star- 
ling, and directly becoming insensible, was conveyed by 
that lady and her husband into another room. Presently 
Mr. Leaver came running back to know if there was a 
medical gentleman in company ; and, as there was (in what 
company is there not ? ), both Mr. Leaver and the medical 
gentleman hurried away together. 

The medical gentleman was the first who returned; 
and among his intimate friends he was observed to laugh 
and wink, and look as unmedical as might be ; but when 
Mr. Leaver came back he was very solemn, and, in answer 
to all inquiries, shook his head, and remarked that Augusta 
was far too sensitive to be trifled with, — an opinion which 
the widow subsequently confirmed. Finding that she was 



496 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

in no imminent peril, however, the rest of the party betook 
themselves to dancing on the green ; and very merry and 
happy they were, and a vast quantity of flirtation there 
was ; the last circumstance being no doubt attributable 
partly to the fineness of the weather, and partly to the 
locality, which is well known to be favorable to all harmless 
recreations. 

In the bustle of the scene, Mr. and Mrs. Leaver stole down 
to the boat, and disposed themselves under the awning ; Mrs. 
Leaver reclining her head upon Mr. Leaver's shoulder, and 
Mr. Leaver grasping her hand with great fervor, and look- 
ing in her face from time to time with a melancholy and 
sympathetic aspect. The widow sat apart, feigning to be 
occupied with a book, but stealthily observing them from 
behind her fan; and the two firemen-watermen, smoking 
their pipes on the bank hard by, nudged each other, and 
grinned in enjoyment of the joke. Very few of the party 
missed the loving couple; and the few who did heartily 
congratulated each other on their disappearance. 



THE CONTRADICTORY COUPLE. 

One would suppose that two people who are to pass 
their whole lives together, and must necessarily be very 
often alone with each other, could find little pleasure in 
mutual contradiction ; and yet what is more common than 
a contradictory couple? 

The contradictory couple agree in nothing but contra- 
diction. They return home from Mrs. Bluebottle's dinner- 
party, each in an opposite corner of the coach, and do not 
exchange a syllable until they have been seated for at least 
twenty minutes by the fireside at home, when the gentle- 
man, raising his eyes from the stove, all at once breaks 
silence. 

" What a very extraordinary thing it is," says he, " that 
3^ou ivill contradict, Charlotte ? " — " I contradict ! " cries 
the lady : " but that's just like you." — " What's like me ? " 
says the gentleman sharply. "Saying that I contradict 
you," replies the lady. " Do you mean to say that you do 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 497 

not contradict me ? " retorts the gentleman ; " do you mean 
to say that you have not been contradicting me the whole 
of this day ? Do you mean to tell me now, that -you have 
not?" — "I mean to tell you nothing of the kind/' replies 
the lady quietly : " when you are wrong, of course I shall 
contradict you." 

During this dialogue the gentleman has been taking his 
brandy-and-water on one^ side of the fire, and the lady, 
with her 1 dressing-case on the table, has been curling her 
hair on the other. She now lets down her back hair, and 
proceeds to brush it ; preserving at the same time an air of 
conscious rectitude and suffering virtue, which is intended 
to exasperate the gentleman, — and does so. 

" I do believe," he says, taking the spoon out of his 
glass, and tossing it on the table, " that of all the obstinate, 
positive, wrong-headed creatures that were ever born, you 
are the-most so, Charlotte." — " Certainly, certainly, have it 
your own way, pray. You see how much I contradict you," 
rejoins the lady. " Of course, you didn't contradict me at 
dinner-time, — oh, no, not you!" says the gentleman. 
"Yes I did," says the lady. "Oh! you did?" cries the 
gentleman : " you admit that ? " — " If you call that con- 
tradiction, I do," the lady answers ; " and I say again, 
Edward, when I know you are wrong I will contradict you. 
I am not your slave." — "Not my slave," repeats the gentle- 
man bitterly; "and you still mean to say that in the 
Blackburns' new house there are not more than fourteen 
doors, including the door of the wine-cellar ! " — "I mean 
to say," retorts the lady, beating time with her hair-brush 
on the palm of her hand, "that in that house there are 
fourteen doors, and no more." — " Well, then " — cries the 
gentleman, rising in despair, and pacing the room with 
rapid strides. " By Gr — , this is enough to destroy a man's 
intellect, and drive him mad ! " 

By and by the gentleman comes to a little, and, passing 
his hand gloomily across his forehead, reseats himself in 
his former chair. There is a long silence, and this time 
the lady begins. " I appealed to Mr. Jenkins, who sat 
next to me on the sofa in the drawing-room during tea" — 
" Morgan, you mean," interrupts the gentleman. " I do 
not mean any thing of the kind," answers the lady. 
" Now, by all that is aggravating and impossible to bear," 
cries the gentleman, clinching his hands, and looking 

42* 



498 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

upwards in agony, "she is going to insist upon it that 
Morgan is Jenkins." — "Do you take me for a perfect 
fool ? " exclaims the lady : " do you suppose I don't know the 
one from the other ? Do you suppose I don't know that 
the man in the blue coat was Mr. -Jenkins ? " — " Jenkins 
in a blue coat ! " cries the gentleman with a groan ; " Jen- 
kins in a blue coat! a man who would suffer death rather 
than wear anything but brown?" — " Do you dare to charge 
me with telling an untruth ? " demands the lady, bursting 
into tears. " I charge you, ma'am," retorts the gentleman, 
starting up, "with being a monster of contradiction, a 
monster of aggravation, a — a — a — Jenkins in a blue 
coat ! what have I done that 1^ should be doomed to hear 
such statements ? " 

Expressing himself with great scorn and anguish, the 
gentleman takes up his candle, and stalks off to bed, where, 
feigning to be fast asleep when the lady comes up stairs, 
drowned in tears, murmuring lamentations over her hard 
fate, and indistinct intentions of consulting her brothers, 
he undergoes the secret torture of hearing her exclaim be- 
tween whiles, " I know there are only fourteen doors in the 
house, I know it was Mr. Jenkins, I know he had a blue 
coat on; and I would say it as positively as I now do, if 
they were the last words I had to speak ! " 

If the contradictory couple are blessed with children, 
they are not the less contradictory on that account. 
Master James and Miss Charlotte present themselves after 
dinner, and being in. perfect good-humor, and finding their 
parents in the same amiable state, augur from these 
appearances half a glass of wine apiece and other extraor- 
dinary indulgences. But, unfortunately, Master James, 
growing talkative upon such prospects, asks his mamma 
how tall Mrs. Parsons is, and whether she is not six feet 
high ; to which his mamma replies, " Yes : she should 
think she was ; for Mrs. Parsons is a very tall lady indeed, 
quite a giantess." — " For Heaven's sake, Charlotte," cries 
her husband, " do not tell the child such preposterous non- 
sense. Six feet high ! " — " Well," replies the lady, " surely 
I may be permitted to have an opinion : my opinion is that 
she is six feet high, — at least six feet." — "Now, you know, 
Charlotte," retorts the gentleman sternly, " that that is not 
your opinion, that you have no such idea, and that you 
only say this for the sake of contradiction." — " You are 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 499 

exceedingly polite," his wife replies : " to be wrong about 
such a paltry question as anybody's height would be no 
great crime ; but I say again, that I believe Mrs. Parsons 
to be six feet, — more than six feet ; nay, I believe you 
know her to be full six feet, and only say she is not be- 
cause I say she is." This taunt disposes the gentleman to 
become violent ; but he checks himself, and is content to 
mutter in a haughty tone, " Six feet : ha, ha ! Mrs. Par- 
sons six feet!" And the lady answers "Yes, six feet. I 
am sure I am glad you are amused ; and I'll say it again, — 
six feet." Thus the subject gradually drops off, and the 
contradiction begins to be forgotten, when Master James, 
with some undefined notion of making himself agreeable, 
and putting things to rights again, unfortunately asks his 
mamma what the moon's made of: which gives her occa- 
sion to say that he had better not ask her, for she is always 
wrong, and never can be right ; that he only exposes her to 
contradiction by asking any question of her ; and that he 
had better ask his papa, who is infallible, and never can be 
wrong. Papa, smarting under this attack, gives a terrible 
pull at the bell, and says, that, if the conversation is to 
proceed in this way, the children had better be removed. 
Removed they are, after a few tears and many struggles ; 
and pa, having looked at ma sideways for a minute or two, 
with a baleful eye, draws his pocket-handkerchief over his 
face, and composes himself for his after-dinner nap. 

The friends of the contradictory couple often deplore 
their frequent disputes, though they rather make light of 
them at the same time ; observing, that there is no doubt 
they are very much attached to each other, and that they 
never quarrel except about trifles. But neither the friends 
of the contradictory couple, nor the contradictory couple 
themselves, reflect, that as the most stupendous objects in 
nature are but vast collections of minute particles, so the 
slightest and least considered trifles make up the sum 
of human happiness or misery. 



500 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 



• THE COUPLE WHO DOTE UPON THEIR CHILDREN. 

The couple who dote upon their children have usually 
a great many of them, — six or eight at least. The chil- 
dren are either the healthiest in all the world, or the most 
unfortunate in existence. In either case, they are equally 
the theme of their doting parents, and equally a source 
of mental anguish and irritation to their doting parents'- 
friends. 

The couple who dote upon their children recognize 
no dates but those connected with their births, acci- 
dents, illnesses, or remarkable deeds. They keep a 
mental almanac with a vast number of Innocents' days, 
all in red letters. They recollect the last coronation, 
because on that day little Tom fell down the kitchen- 
stairs ; the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, because it 
was on the 5th of November that Ned asked whether 
wooden legs were made in heaven, and cocked hats grew 
in gardens. Mrs. Whiffler will never cease to recollect 
the last day of the old year as long as she lives, for it 
was on that day that the baby had the four red spots on 
its nose which they took for measles ; nor Christmas Day, 
for twenty-one days after Christmas Day the twins were 
born ; nor Q-ood Friday, for it was on a Good Friday that 
she was frightened by the donkey-cart when she was in the 
family way with Georgiana. The movable feasts have no 
motion for Mr. and Mrs. Whiffler, but remain pinned down, 
tight and fast to the shoulders of some small child, from 
whom they can never be separated any more. Time was 
made, according to their creed, not for slaves but for girls 
and boys; the restless sands in his glass are but little 
children at play. 

As we have already intimated; the children of this cou- 
ple can know no medium. They are either prodigies of 
good health or prodigies of bad health : whatever they are, 
they must be prodigies. Mr. Whiffler must have to de- 
scribe at his office such excruciating agonies constantly 
undergone by his eldest boy, as nobody else's eldest boy 
ever underwent ; or he must be able to declare that 
there never was a child endowed with such amazing health, 
such an indomitable constitution, and such a cast-iron 
frame, as his child. His children must be, in some re- 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 501 

speet or other, above and beyond the children of all other 
people. To such an extent is this feeling pushed, that 
we Were once slightly acquainted with a lady and gen- 
tleman who carried their heads so high and became so 
proud after their youngest chil4 fell out of a two-pair- 
of-stairs window without hurting himself much, that the 
greater part of their friends were obliged to forego their 
acquaintance. 

But perhaps this may be an extreme case, and one 
not justly entitled to be considered as a precedent of 
general application. 

If a friend happen to dine in a friendly way with 
one of these couples who dote upon their children, it is 
nearly impossible for him to divert the conversation from 
their favorite topic. Every thing reminds Mr. Whiffler 
of Ned, or Mrs. Whiffler of Mary Anne, or of the time, 
before Ned was born, or the time before Mary Anne was 
thought of. The slightest remark, however harmless in 
itself, will awaken slumbering recollections of the twins. 
It is* impossible to steer clear of them. They will come 
uppermost, let the poor man do what he may. Ned 
has been known to be lost sight of for half an hour, 
Dick has been forgotten, the name of Mary Anne has 
not been mentioned, but the twins will out. Nothing can 
keep down the twins. 

" It's a very extraordinary thing, Saunders," says Mr. 
Whiffler to the visitor; "but — you have seen our little 
babies, the — the — twins?" The friend's heart sinks 
within him as he answers, " Oh, yes ! often." " Your talk- 
ing of the pyramids," says Mr. Whiffler, quite as a matter 
of course, " reminds me of the twins. It's a very extraor- 
dinary thing about those babies, — what color should you 
say their eyes were?" — "Upon my word," the friend 
stammers, "I hardly know how to answer," — the fact 
being, that .except as the friend does not remember to 
have heard of any departure from the ordinary course 
of Nature in the instance of these twins, they might 
have no eyes at all for aught he has observed to the 
contrary. " You wouldn't say they were red, I suppose ? " 
says Mr. Whiffler. The friend hesitates, and rather thinks 
they are ; but inferring from the expression of Mr. Whif- 
fler's face that red is not the color, smiles with some con- 
fidence, and says, "No, no! very different from that." 



502 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

"What should you pay to blue ? " says Mr. Whiffler. The 
friend glances at him, and, observing a different expression 
in his face, ventures to say, " I should say they were blue, 
— a decided blue." io" To be sure!" cries Mr. Whiffler, tri- 
umphantly: "I ¥-n~w you would! But what should you 
say if I was to te. 3u that the boy's eyes are blue and 
the girl's hazel, eh V : " Impossible ! " exclaims the friend, 
not at all knowing why it should be impossible. " A fact, 
notwithstanding," cries Mr. Whiffler; "and let me tell 
you, Saunders, that's not a common thing in twins, or a 
circumstance that'll happen every day." 

In this dialogue Mrs. Whiffler, as being deeply respon- 
sible for the twins, their charms and singularities, has 
taken no share ; but she now relates, in broken English, 
a witticism of little Dick's bearing upon the subject just 
discussed, which delights Mr. Whiffler beyond measure, 
and causes him to declare that he would have sworn that 
was Dick's if he had heard it anywhere. Then he re- 
quests that Mrs. Whiffler will tell Saunders what Tom 
said about mad bulls ; and Mrs. Whiffler relating * the 
anecdote, a discussion ensues upon the different character 
of Tom's wit and Dick's wit, from which it appears, that 
Dick's humor is of a lively turn, while Tom's style is the 
dry and caustic. This discussion being enlivened by vari- 
ous illustrations, lasts a long time, and is only stopped by 
Mrs. Whiffler instructing the footman to ring the nursery- 
bell, as the children were promised that they should come 
down and taste the pudding. 

The friend turns pale when this order is given, and 
paler still when it is followed up by a great pattering on 
the staircase (not unlike the sound of rain upon a sky- 
light), a violent bursting open of the dining-room door, 
and the tumultuous appearance of six small children, 
closely succeeded by a strong nursery-maid with a twin 
in each arm. As the whole eight are screaming, shout- 
ing, or kicking, — some influenced by a ravenous appetite, 
some by a horror of the stranger, and some by a conflict 
of the two feelings, — a pretty long space elapses before 
all their heads can be ranged round the table and any 
thing like order restored ; in bringing about which happy 
state of things both the nurse and footman are severely 
scratched. At length Mrs. Whiffler is heard to say, 
"Mr. Saunders, shall I give you some pudding?" A 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 503 

breathless silence ensues, and sixteen small eyes are fixed 
upon the guest in expectation of his reply. A wild shout 
or joy proclaims that he has said, " So : thank you." 
Spoons are waved in the air, legs appear above the table- 
cloth in uncontrollable ecstasy, and ^onty short fingers 
dabble in damson sirup. 

While the pudding is being disposed' 'of, Mr. and Mrs. 
Whiffler look on with beaming countenances ; and Mr. 
Whiffler, nudging his friend Saunders, - begs him take 
notice of Tom's eyes, or Dick's chin, or Ned's nose, or 
Mary Anne's hair, or Emily s figure, or little Bob's calves, 
or Fanny's mouth, or Cary's head, as the case may be. 
Whatever the intention of Mr. Saunders is called to, 
Mr. Saunders admires of course ; though he is rather 
confused about the sex of the youngest branches, and 
looks~-at the wrong children, turning to a girl when Mr. 
Whiffler directs his attention to a boy, and falling into 
raptures with a boy when he ought to be enchanted with 
a girl. Then the dessert comes ; and there is a vast deal 
of scrambling after fruit, and sudden spirting forth of 
juice out of tight oranges into infant eyes, and much 
screeching and wailing in consequence. At length it 
becomes time for Mrs. Whiffler to retire ; and all the chil- 
dren are by force of arms compelled to ' kiss and love Mr. 
Saunders before going up stairs, except Tom, who, lying 
on his back in the hall, proclaims that Mr. Saunders " is 
a naughty beast ; " and Dick, who, having drunk his fath- 
er's wine when he was looking another way, is found to be 
intoxicated, and is carried out very limp and helpless. 

Mr. Whiffler and his friend are left alone together ; but 
Mr. Whiffler's thoughts are still with his family, if his 
family are not with him. " {Saunders," says he, after a 
short silence, " if you please, we'll drink Mrs. Whiffler and 
the children." Mr. Saunders feel this to be a reproach 
against himself for not proposing the same sentiment, and 
drinks it in some confusion. "Ah!" Mr. Whifner sighs, 
"these children, Saunders, make one quite an old man." 
Mr. Saunders thinks, that, if they were his, they would 
make him a very old man ; but he says nothing. " And 
yet," pursues Mr. Whiffler, " what can equal domestic hap- 
piness ? what can equal the engaging ways of children ? 
Saunders, why don't you get married ? " Now, this is an 
embarrassing question, because Mr. Saunders has been 



504 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

thinking, that, if he had at any time entertained matrimo- 
nial designs, the revelation of that day would surely have 
routed them forever. " I am glad, however," says Mr. 
Whiffler, " that you are a bachelor, — glad on one account, 
Saunders, — a selfish one, I admit. Will you do Mrs. 
Whiffler and myself a favor?" Mr. Saunders is sur- 
prised, — evidently surprised ; but he replies, " With the 
greatest pleasure." — " Then, will you, Saunders," says Mr. 
Whiffler, in an impressive manner, "will you cement and 
consolidate our friendship by coming into the family (so to 
speak) as a godfather ? " — "I shall be proud and delighted," 
replies Mr. Saunders : " which of the children is it ? really, 
I thought they were all christened ; or " — " Saunders," 
Mr. Whifner interposes, " they are all christened : you are 
right. The fact is, that Mrs. Whiffler is — in short, we 
expect another." — " Not a ninth ! " cries the friend, all 
aghast at the idea. " Yes, Saunders," rejoins Mr. Whiffler 
solemnly, " a ninth. Did we drink Mrs. Whiffler' s health ? 
Let us drink it again, Saunders, and wish her well over it ! " 
Dr. Johnson used to tell a story of a man who had but 
one idea, which was a wrong one. The couple who dote 
upon their children are in the same predicament ; at home 
or abroad, at all times, and in all places, their thoughts are 
bound up in this one subject, and have no sphere beyond. 
They relate the clever things their offspring say or do, and 
weary every company with their prolixity and absurdity. 
Mr. Whiffler takes a friend by the button at a street- 
corner on a windy day to tell him a bon mot of his young- 
est boy's ; and Mrs. Whiffler, calling to see a sick acquaint- 
ance, entertains her with a cheerful account of all her own 
past sufferings and present expectations. In such cases 
the sins of the fathers indeed descend upon the children; 
for people soon come to regard them as predestined little 
bores. The couple who dote upon their children cannot be 
said to be actuated by a general love for these engaging 
little people (which would be a great excuse) ; for they are 
apt to underrate and entertain a jealousy of any children but 
their own. If they examined their own hearts, they would 
perhaps find at the bottom of all this more self-love and 
egotism than they think of. Self-love and egotism are 
bad qualities, of which the unrestrained exhibition, though 
it may be sometimes amusing, never fails to be wearisome 
and unpleasant. Couples who dote upon their children, 
therefore, are best avoided. 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 505 



THE COOL COUPLE. 

There is an old-fashioned weather-glass representing a 
house with two doorways, in one of which is the no-nre of 
a gentleman, in the other the figure cf a lady. When the 
weather is to be fine the lady comes out, and the gentleman 
goes m; when wet, the gentleman comes out, and the lady 
goes in They never seek each other's society, are never 
elevated and depressed by the same cause, and have noth- 
ing m common. They are the model of a cool couple 
except that there is something of politeness and considera- 
tion about the behavior of the gentleman in the weather- 
glass, m which neither of the cool couple can be said to 
participate. 

The cool couple are seldom alone together, and, when 
they are, nothing can exceed their apathy and dulness : the 
gentleman being for the most part drowsy, and the lady 
silent. If they enter into conversation, it is usually of an 
ironical or recriminatory nature. Thus, when the gentle- 
man has indulged in a very long yawn, and settled himself 
more snugly m his easy-chair, the lady will perhaps re- 

Z% ,', "m Vell > * am Sure > Cliarles ! X ll0 P e you're comfort- 
able. To which the gentleman replies, " Oh, yes ! he's quite 
comfortable, — quite." — « There are not many married men, 
I hope, returns the lady, "who seek comfort in such 
selfish gratifications as you do." — "Nor many wives who 
seek comfort in such selfish gratifications as you do I 
hope, retorts the gentleman. "Whose fault is that?" 
demands the lady. The gentleman becoming more sleepy 
returns no answer. "Whose fault is that?" the lady 
repeats. The gentleman still returning no answer, she 
goes on to say tl^at she believes there never was in all this 
world anybody so attached to her home, so thoroughly 
domestic, so unwilling to seek a moment's gratification or 
pleasure beyond her own fireside, as she. God knows that 
before she was married she never thought or dreamt of such 
a thing 5 and she remembers that her poor papa used to 
|ay again and again, almost every day of his life, "Oh my 
§ear Louisa, if you only marry a man who understands 
fou, and takes the trouble to consider your happiness and 
^commodate himself a very little to your disposition, what 
1 treasure he will find in you!" She supposes her papa 



506 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

knew what her disposition was, — he had known her long 
enough, — he ought to have been acquainted with it; but 
what can she do ? If her home is always dull and lonely, 
and her husband is always absent, and finds no pleasure in 
her society, she is naturally sometimes driven (seldom 
enough, she is sure) to seek a little recreation elsewhere ; 
she is not expected to pine and mope to death, she hopes. 
" Then come, Louisa," says the gentleman, waking up as 
suddenly as he fell asleep, " stop at home this evening, and 
so will I." — " I should be sorry to suppose, Charles, that 
you took a pleasure in aggravating me/' replies the lady ; 
"but you know as well as I do that I am particularly 
engaged to Mrs. Mortimer, and that it would be an act of 
the grossest rudeness and ill-breeding, after accepting a 
seat in her box and preventing her from inviting anybody 
else, not to go." "Ah, there it is!" says the gentleman, 
shrugging his shoulders ; " I knew that perfectly well. I 
knew you couldn't devote an evening to your own home. 
Now, all I have to say, Louisa, is this : recollect that I was 
quite willing to stay at home, and that it's no fault of mine 
we are not oftener together." 

With that the gentleman goes away to keep an old ap- 
pointment at his club, and the lady hurries off to dress for 
Mrs. Mortimer's ; and neither thinks of the other until by 
some odd chance they find themselves alone again. 

But it must not be supposed that the cool couple are 
habitually a quarrelsome one. Quite the contrary. These 
differences are only occasions for a little self-excuse, — noth- 
ing more. In general they are as easy .and careless, and 
dispute as seldom, as any common acquaintances may ; for 
it is neither worth their while to put each other out of the 
way, nor to ruffle themselves. 

When they meet in society, the cool couple are the best 
bred people in existence. The lady is seated in a corner 
among a little knot of lady friends, one of whom exclaims, 
" Why, I vow and declare ! there is your husband, my 
dear." — " Whose ? — mine ? " she says carelessly. " Ay, 
yours, and coming this way too." — " How very odd ! " says 
the lady, in a languid tone : " I thought he had been in 
Dover." The gentleman coming up, and speaking to all 
the other ladies, and nodding slightly to his wife, it turns 
out that he has been at Dover, and has just now returned. 
" What a strange creature you are ! " cries his wife ; " and 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 507 

what on earth brought you here, I wonder ? " — "I came to 
look after you, of course," rejoins her husband. This is so 
pleasant a jest that the lady is mightily amused, as are all 
the other ladies similarly situated who are within hearing ; 
and, while they are enjoying it to the full, the gentleman 
nods again, turns upon his heel, and saunters away. 

There are times, however, when his company is not so 
agreeable, though equally unexpected; such as when the 
lady has invited one or two particular friends to tea and 
scandal, and he happens to come home in the very midst 
of their diversion. ' It is a hundred chances to one that he 
remains in the house half an hour ; but the lady is rather 
disturbed by the intrusion, notwithstanding, and reasons 
within herself, "I am- sure I never interfere with him, and 
why should he interfere with me? It can scarcely be 
accidental: it never happens that I have a particular reason 
for not wishing him to come home, but he always comes. 
It's very provoking and tiresome ; and I am sure when he 
leaves me so much alone for his own pleasure, the least he 
could do would be to do as much for mine." Observing 
what passes in her mind, the gentleman, who has come 
home for his own accommodation, makes a merit of it with 
himself ; arrives at the conclusion that it is the very last 
place in which he can hope to be comfortable ; and deter- 
mines, as he takes up his hat and cane, never to be so vir- 
tuous again. 

Thus a great many cool couples go on until they are cold 
couples, and the grave has closed over their folly and indif- 
ference. Loss of name, station, character, life itself, has 
ensued from causes as slight as these before now; and 
when gossips tell such tales, and aggravate their deformi- 
ties, they elevate their hands and eyebrows, and call each 
other to witness what a cool couple Mr. and Mrs. So-and- 
so always were, even in the best of times. 



508 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 



THE PLAUSIBLE COUPLE. 

The plausible couple have many titles. They are a 
" delightful couple/' u an affectionate couple/' " a most 
agreeable couple/' " a good-hearted couple/' and " the best- 
natured couple in existence." The truth is, that the plau- 
sible couple are people of. the world ; and either the way of 
pleasing the world has grown much easier than it was in 
the days of the old man and his ass, or the old man was 
but a bad hand at it, and knew very little of the trade. 

"l>ut is it really possible to please the world?" says 
some doubting reader. It is, indeed. Nay, it is not only 
very possible, but very easy. The way3 are crooked, and 
sometimes foul and low. What then ? A man need but 
crawl upon his hands and knees, know when to close his 
eyes and when his ears, when to stoop and when to stand 
upright ; and, if by the world is meant that atom of it in 
which he moves himself, he shall please it, never fear. 

Now, it will be readily seen, that, if a plausible man or 
woman have an easy means of pleasing the world by an 
adaptation of self to all its twistings and twinings, a plau- 
sible man and woman, or, in other words, a plausible couple, 
playing into each other's hands, and acting in concert, have 
a manifest advantage. Hence it is that plausible couples 
scarcely ever fail of success on a pretty large scale ; and hence 
it is that if the reader, laying down this unwieldly volume 
at the next full-stop, will have the goodness to review his 
or lier circle of acquaintance, and to search particularly for 
some man and wife with a large connection and a good 
name, not easily referable to their abilities or their wealth, 
•he or she (tlmt is, the male or female reader) will certainly 
find that gentleman and lady, on a very short reflection, to 
be a plausible couple. 

The plausible couple are the most ecstatic people living ; 
the most sensitive people — to merit — on the face of the 
earth. Nothing clever or virtuous escapes them. They 
have microscopic eyes for such endowments, and can find 
them anywhere. The plausible couple never fawn, — oh, 
no ! They don't even scruple to tell their friends of their 
faults. One is too generous, another too candid ; a third 
has a tendency to think all people like himself, and to 
regard mankind as a company of angels ; a fourth is kind- 



. SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 509 

hearted to a fault. "We never flatter, my dear Mrs. Jack- 
son," says the plausible couple : " we speak our minds. 
Neither you nor Mr. Jackson have faults enough. It may 
sound strangely, but it is true. You have not faults enough. 
You know our way, — we must speak out, and always do. 
Quarrel with us for saying so, if you will; but, we repeat 
it, you have not faults enough ! " 

The plausible couple are no less plausible to each other 
than to third parties. They are always loving and harmo- 
nious. The plausible gentleman calls his wife " darling," 
and the plausible lady addresses him as " dearest." If it 
be Mr. and Mrs. Bobtail Widger, Mrs. Widger is "Lavinia, 
darling," and Mr. Widger is " Bobtail, dearest." Speaking 
of each other, they observe the same tender form. Mrs. 
Widger relates what " Bobtail " said, and Mr. Widger 
i ecounts^what " darling " thought and did. 

If you sit next to the plausible lady at a dinner-table, 
she takes the earliest opportunity of expressing her belief 
that you are acquainted with the Clickits : she is sure she 
has heard the Clickits speak of you, — she must not tell 
you in what . terms, or you will take her for a flatterer. 
You admit a knowledge of the Clickits ; the plausible lady 
immediately launches out in their praise. She quite. loves 
the Clickits. Were there ever such true-hearted, hospitable, 
excellent people ? — such a gentle, interesting little woman 
as Mrs. Clickit, or such a frank, unaffected creature as Mr. 
Clickit ? Were there ever two people, in short, so little 
spoiled by the world as they are ? " As who, darling ? " 
cries Mr. Widger from the opposite side of the table. " The 
Clickits, dearest," replies Mrs. Widger. " Indeed you are 
right, darling," Mr. Widger rejoins : " the Clickits are a 
very high-minded, worthy, estimable couple." Mrs. Widger 
remarking that Bobtail always grows quite eloquent upon 
this subject, Mr. Widger admits that he feels very strongly 
whenever such people as the Clickits and some other friends 
of his (here he glances at the host and hostess) are mentioned ; 
for they are an honor to human nature, and do one good to 
think of. "You know the Clickits, Mrs. Jackson?" he 
says, addressing the lady of the house. " No, indeed ; we 
have not that pleasure," she replies. "You astonish me !" 
exclaims Mr. Widger: "'not know the Clickits! why, you 
are the very people of all others who ought to be their 
bosom friends. You are kindred beings ; you are one and 
43* 



510 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

the same thing, — not know the Clickits ! Now, will you 
know the Clickits ? Will you make a point of knowing 
them ? Will you meet them in a friendly way at our house - 
one evening, and be acquainted with them ? " Mrs. Jack- 
son will be quite delighted ; nothing would give her more 
pleasure. " Then, Lavinia, my darling," says Mr. Widger, 
" mind you don't lose sight of that ; now, pray take care- 
that Mr. and Mrs. Jackson know the Clickits without loss 
of time. Such people ought not to be strangers to each 
other." Mrs. Widger books both families as the centre of 
attraction for her next party ; and Mr. Widger, going on 
to expatiate upon the virtues of the Clickits, adds to their 
other moral qualities, that they keep one of the neatest 
phaetons in town, and have two thousand a year. 

As the plausible couple never laud the merits of any 
absent person, without dexterously contriving that their 
praises shall reflect, upon somebody who is present, so they 
never 'depreciate any thing or anybody without turning 
their depreciation to the same account. Their friend, Mr. 
Slummery, say they, is unquestionably a clever painter, 
and would -no doubt be very popular, and sell his pictures 
at a very high price, if that cruel Mr. Fithers had not fore- 
stalled him in his department of art, and made it thor- 
oughly and completely his own, — Fithers, it is to be 
observed, being present and within hearing, and Slummery 
elsewhere. Is Mrs. Tabblewick really as beautiful as people 
say? Why, there -indeed you ask them a very puzzling 
question, because there is no doubt that she is a very charm- 
ing woman, and they have long known her intimately. She 
is no doubt beautiful, — very beautiful ; they once thought 
her the most beautiful woman ever seen : still, if you press 
them for an honest answer, they are bound to say that this 
was before they had ever seen our lovely friend on the sofa 
(the sofa is hard by, and our lovely friend can't help hear- 
ing the whispers in which this is said) ; since that time, 
perhaps, they have been hardly fair judges. Mrs. Tabble- 
wick is no doubt extremely handsome, — very like our 
friend, in fact, in the form of the features, — but, in point 
of expression and soul and figure, and air all together — 
oh, dear ! 

But, while the plausible couple depreciate, they are still 
careful to preserve their character for amiability and kind 
feeling; indeed, the depreciation itself is often made to 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 511 

grow out of their excessive sympathy and good-will. The 
plausible lady calls on a lady who dote* upon her children, 
and is sitting with a little girl upon her knee, enraptured 
by her artless replies, and protesting that there is nothing 
she delights in so much as conversing with these fairies ; 
when the other lady inquires if she has seen young Mrs. 
Pinching lately, and whether the baby has turned out a 
finer one than it promised to be. " Oh, dear ! " cries the 
plausible lady, "you cannot think how often Bobtail and 
I have talked about poor Mrs. Pinching, — she is such a 
dear soul, and was so anxious that the baby should be a 
fine child ; and, very naturally, because she was very 
much here at one time, and there is, you know, a natural 
emulation among mothers, — that it is impossible to tell 
you how much we have felt for her." — " Is it weak, or 
plain, or what ? " inquires the other. " Weak, or plain, my' 
love," "returns the plausible lady: "it's alright, — a per- 
fect little fright : you never saw such a miserable creature 
in all your days. Positively } r ou must not let her see one 
of these beautiful dears again, or you'll break her heart, — 
you will indeed. Heaven bless this child ! see how she is 
looking in my face ! can you conceive any thing prettier 
than that ? If poor Mrs. Pinching could only hope — 
but that's impossible, — and the gifts of Providence, you 
know — What did I do with my pocket-handkerchief ! " 

What prompts the mother, who dotes upon her children, 
to comment to her lord that evening on the plausible lady's 
engaging qualities and feeling heart ? and what is it that 
procures Mr. and Mrs. Bobtail Widger an immediate invita- 
tion to dinner ? 



THE NICE LITTLE COUPLE. 

A custom once prevailed, in old-fashioned circles, that 
when a lady or gentleman was unable to sing a song, he or 
she should enliven the company with a story. As we find 
ourself in the predicament of not being able to describe (to 
our own satisfaction) nice little couples in the abstract, we 
purpose telling in this place a little story about a nice little 
couple of our acquaintance. 



512 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

Mr. and Mrs. Chirrup are the nice little couple in ques- 
tion. Mr. Chirriyp has the smartness, and something of 
the brisk, quick manner, of a small bird. Mrs. Chirrup is 
the prettiest of all little women, and has the prettiest little 
figure conceivable. She has the neatest little foot, and the 
softest little voice, and the pleasantest little smile, and 
the tidiest little curls, and the brightest little eyes, and 
the quietest little manner, and is, in short, altogether one 
of the most engaging of all little women, dead or alive. She 
is a condensation of 'all the domestic virtues ; a pocket 
edition of " The Young Man's Best Companion;" a little 
woman at a very high pressure, with an amazing quantity 
of goodness and usefulness in an exceedingly small space. 
Little as she is, Mrs. Chirrup might furnish forth matter 
for the moral equipment of a score of housewives, six feet 
high in their stockings, — if, in the presence of ladies, we 
may be allowed the expression, — and of corresponding ro- 
bustness. 

Nobody knows all this better, than Mr. Chirrup, though 
he rather takes on that he don't. Accordingly, he is very 
proud of his better half, and evidently considers himself, as 
all other people consider him, rather fortunate in having 
her to wife. We say evidently, because Mr. Chirrup is a 
warm-hearted little fellow ; and if you catch his eye, when 
he has been slyly glancing at Mrs. Chirrup in company, 
there is a certain complacent twinkle in it, accompanied, 
perhaps, by a half-expressed toss of the head, which as 
clearly indicates what has been passing in his mind, as if 
he had put it into words, and shouted it out through a 
speaking-trumpet. Moreover, Mr. Chirrup has a particu- 
larly mild and bird-like manner of calling Mrs. Chirrup 
"my dear; " and — for he is of a jocose turn — of cutting 
little witticisms upon her, and making her the subject of 
various harmless pleasantries, which nobody enjoys more 
throughly than Mrs. Chirrup herself. Mr. Chirrup, too, 
now and then affects to deplore his bachelor-days, and to 
bemoan (with a marvellously contented and smirking face)^ 
the loss of his freedom, and the sorrow of his heart at hav- 
ing been taken captive by Mrs. Chirrup, — all of which 
circumstances combine to show the secret triumph and sat- 
isfaction of Mr. Chirrup's soul. 

We have already had occasion to observe that Mrs. Chir- 
rup is an incomparable housewife. In all the arts of domes- 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 613 

tic arrangement and management, in all the mysteries of 
confectionery-making, pickling, and preserving, never was 
such a thorough adept as tlrat nice little body. She is, be- 
sides, a cunning worker in muslin and fine linen, and a 
special hand at marketing to the very best advantage. But 
if there be one branch of housekeeping in which she excels 
to an utterly unparalleled and unprecedented extent, it is 
in the important one of carving. A roast goose is univer- 
sally allowed to be the great stumbling-block in the way of 
young aspirants to perfection in this department of science ; 
many promising carvers, beginning with legs of mutton, 
and preserving a good reputation through fillets of veal, 
sirloins of beef, quarters of lamb, fowls, and even ducks, 
have sunk before a roast goose, and lost caste and charac- 
ter forever. To Mrs. Chirrup the resolving a goose into its 
smallest component parts is a pleasant pastime, — a practi- 
cal joke, — a thing to be done in a miuute or so, without 
the smallest interruption to the conversation of the time. 
No handing the dish "over to an unfortunate man upon her 
right or left, no wild sharpening of the knife, no hacking 
and sawing at an unruly joint, no noise, no splash, no heat, no 
leaving off in despair ; all is confidence and cheerfulness. 
The dish is set upon the table, the cover is removed : for an 
instant, and only an instant, you observe that Mrs. Chirrup's 
attention is distracted ; she smiles, but heareth not. You 
proceed with your story ; meanwhile the glittering knife is 
slowly upraised, both Mrs. Chirrup's wrists are slightly but 
not ungracefully agitated, she compresses her lips for an 
instant, then breaks into a smile, and all is over. The legs 
of the bird slide gently down into a pool of gravy, the 
wings seem to melt from the body, the breast separates into 
a row of juicy slices, the smaller and more complicated 
parts of his anatomy are perfectly developed, a cavern of 
stuffing is revealed, and the goose is gone ! 

To dine with Mr. and Mrs. Chirrup is one of the pleas- 
antest things in the world. Mr. Chirrup has a bachelor 
friend, who lived with him in his own days of single bless- 
edness, and to whom he is mightily attached. Contrary 
to the usual custom, this bachelor friend is no less a friend 
of Mrs. Chirrup's, and, consequently, whenever you dine 
with Mr. and Mrs. Chirrup, you meet the bachelor friend. 
It would put any reasonably conditioned mortal into good 
humor to observe the unanimity which subsists between 



514 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

these three ; but there is a quiet welcome dimpling in Mrs, 
Chirrup's face, a bustling hospitality oozing as it were out 
of the waistcoat pockets of Mr*. Chirrup, and a patronizing 
enjoyment of their cordiality and satisfaction on the part 
of the bachelor friend, which is quite delightful. On these 
occasions Mr. Chirrup usually takes an opportunity of rally- 
ing the friend on being single, and the friend retorts upon 
Mr. Chirrup for being married, at which moments some sin- 
gle young ladies present are like to die of laughter : and 
we have more than once observed them bestow looks upon 
the friend, which convinces us that his position is by no 
means a safe one, as, indeed, we hold no bachelor's to be 
who visits married friends, and cracks jokes on wedlock ; for 
certain it is, that such men walk among traps and nets and 
pitfalls innumerable, and often find themselves down upon 
their knees at the altar-rails, taking M. or N. for their 
wedded wives before they know any thing about the 
matter. 

However, this is no business of Mr. Chirrup's, who talks 
and laughs, and drinks his wine, and laughs again, and 
talks 'more, until it is time to repair to the drawing-room, 
where, coffee served over and over, Mrs. Chirrup prepares 
for a round game, by sorting the nicest possible little fish 
into the nicest possible little pools, and calling Mr. Chirrup 
to assist her, which Mr. Chirrup does. As they stand side 
by side, you find that Mr. Chirrup is the least possible sha- 
dow of a shade taller than Mrs. Chirrup, and that they are 
the neatest and best-matched little couple that can be, 
which the chances are ten to one against your observing 
with such effect at any other time, unless you see them in 
the street arm-in-arm, or meet them some rainy day trotting 
along under a very small umbrella. The round game (at 
which Mr. Chirrup is the merriest of the party) being done 
and over, in course of time a nice little tray appears, on 
which is a nice little supper; and when that is finished 
likewise, and you have said, " Good-night," you find your- 
self repeating a dozen times as you ride home, that there 
never was such a nice little couple as Mr. and Mrs. Chirrup. 

Whether it is that pleasant qualities, being packed more 
closely in small bodies than in large, come more readily to 
hand than when they are diffused over a wider space, and 
have to be gathered together for use, we don't know ; but as 
a general rule, — strengthened like all other rules by its 



SKETCHES OF, YOUNG COUPLES. 515 

exceptions, — we hold that little people are sprightly and 
good-natured. The more sprightly and good-natured peo- 
ple we have, the better; therefore let us wish well to all 
nice little couples, and hope that they may increase and 
multiply. 



THE EGOTISTICAL COUPLE. 

Egotism in couples is of two kinds. It is our purpose 
to show this by two examples. 

The egotistical couple may be young, old, middle-aged, 
well-to-do, or ill-to-do ; they may have a small family, a 
large family, or no family at all. There is no outward sign 
by which an egotistical couple may be known and avoided. 
They come upon you unawares : there is no guarding 
against them. No man can of himself be fore-warned or 
fore-armed against an egotistical couple. 

The egotistical couple have undergone every calamity, 
and experienced every pleasurable and painful sensation, of 
which our nature is susceptible. You cannot by possibility 
tell the egotistical couple any thing they don't know, or 
describe to them any thing they have not felt. They have 
been every thing but dead. Sometimes we are tempted to 
wish they had been even that, but only in our uncharitable 
moments, which are few and far between. 

We happened the other day, in the course of a morning 
call, to encounter an egotistical couple, nor were we suffered 
to remain long in ignorance of the fact ; for our very first 
inquiry of the lady of the house brought them into active 
and vigorous operation. The inquiry was of course touch- 
ing the lady's health ; and the answer happened to be that 
she had not been very well. " my dear ! " said the ego- 
tistical lady, " don't talk of not being well. We have been 
in such a state since we saw you last!" The lady of the 
house happening to remark that her lord had not been well 
either, the egotistical gentleman struck in, "Never let 
Briggs complain of not being well, — never let Briggs 
complain, my dear Mrs. Briggs, after what I have under- 
gone within these six weeks. He doesn't know what it is 
to be ill ; he hasn't the least idea of it, — not the faintest 



&> 



516 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

conception." u My dear," interposed his wife, smilin 
" you talk as if it were almost a crime in Mr. Briggs not 
to have been as ill as we have been, instead of feeling 
thankful to Providence that both he and our dear Mrs. 
Briggs are in such blissful ignorance of real suffering." 
" My love," returned the egotistical gentleman, in a low 
and pious voice, "you mistake me ; I feel grateful, — very 
grateful. I trust our friends may never purchase their ex- 
perience as dearly as we have bought ours ; I hope they 
never may ! " 

Having put down Mrs. Briggs upon this theme, and set- 
tled the question thus, the egotistical gentleman turned to 
us, and after a few preliminary remarks, all tending to- 
wards and leading up to the point he had in his mind, in- 
quired if we happened to be acquainted with the Dowager 
Lady Snorflerer. On our replying in the negative, he pre- 
sumed we had often met .Lord Slang, or, beyond all doubt, 
that we were on intimate terms with Sir Chipkins Clogwog. 
Finding that we were equally unable to laj' claim to either 
of these distinctions, he expressed great astonishment, and, 
turning to his wife with a retrospective smile, inquired who 
it was that had told that capital story about the mashed 
potatoes. " Who, my dear ? " returned the egotistical lady, 
"why, Sir Chipkins, of course; how can you ask! Don't 
you remember his applying it to our cook, and saying that 
you and I were so like the prince and princess that he 
could almost have sworn we were they ? " — " To be sure, I 
remember that," said the egotistical gentlemen ; " but are 
you quite certain that didn't apply to the other anecdote 
about the Emperor of Austria and the pump ? " — " Upon 
my word, then, I think it did," replied his wife. " To be 
sure it did," said the egotistical gentleman : u it was Slang's 
story, I remember now, perfectly." However, it turned out, 
a few seconds afterwards, thtit the egotistical gentleman's 
memory was rather treacherous, as he began to have a mis- 
giving that the story had been told by the Dowager Lady 
Snorflerer the very last time they dined there; but there 
appearing, on further consideration, strong circumstantial 
evidence tending to show that this couldn't be, inasmuch 
as the Dowager Lady Snorflerer had been, on the occasion 
in question, wholly engrossed by the egotistical lady, the 
egotistical gentleman recanted this opinion ; and, after lay- 
ing the story at the doors of a great many great people, 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 517 

happily left it last with the Duke of Scuttlewig, observing 
that it was not extraordinary he had forgotten his grace 
hitherto, as it often happened that the names of those with 
whom we were upon the most familiar footing were the 
very last to present themselves to our thoughts. 

It not only appeared that the egotistical couple knew 
everybody, but that scarcely any event of importance or 
notoriety had occurred for many years with which they had 
not been in some way or other connected. Thus we learned 
that when the well-known attempt upon the life of George 
the Third was made by Hatfield, in Drury Lane Theatre, 
the egotistical gentleman's grandfather sat upon his right 
hand, and was the first man who collared him ; and that the 
egotistical lady's aunt, sitting within a few boxes of the 
royal party, was the only person in the audience who heard 
his Majesty exclaim, " Charlotte, Charlotte, don't be fright- 
ened, ^don't be frightened: they're letting off squibs, 
they're letting off squibs." When the fire broke out which 
ended in the destruction of the two houses of parliament, 
the egotistical couple, being at the time at a drawing- 
room window on Blackkeath, then and there simultane- 
ously exclaimed, to the astonishment of a whole party, 
"It's the house of lords!" Nor was this a solitary 
instance of their peculiar discernment: for, chancing to 
be (as by a comparison of dates and circumstances they 
afterwards found) in the same omnibus with Mr. Greenacrc, 
when he carried his victim's head about town in a blue 
bag, they both remarked a singular twitching in the muscles 
of his countenance ; and walking down Fish-street Hill, 
a few weeks since, the egotistical gentleman said to his 
lady, slightly casting up his eyes to the top of the Monu- 
ment, " There's a boy up there, my dear, reading a Bible. 
It's very strange : I don't like it. In five seconds after- 
wards, sir," says the egotistical gentleman, bringing his 
hands together with one violent clap, " the lad was over ! " 

Diversifying these topics by the introduction of many 
others of the same kind, and entertaining us between whiles 
with a minute account of what weather and diet agreed 
with them, and what weather and diet disagreed with 
them, and at what time they usually got up, and at what 
time went to bed, with many other particulars of their 
domestic economy too numerous to mention, the egotistical 

44 



518 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

couple at length took their leave, and afforded us an oppor- 
tunity of doing the same. 

Mr. and Mrs. Sliverstone are an egotistical couple of 
another class ; for all the lady's egotism is about her hus- 
band, and all the gentleman's about his wife. For example : 
Mr. Sliverstone is a clerical gentleman, and occasionally 
writes sermons, as clerical gentlemen do. If you happen 
to obtain admission at the street-door while he is so en- 
gaged, Mrs. Sliverstone appears on tiptoe, and speaking in 
a solemn whisper, as if there were at least three or four 
particular friends up stairs, all upon the point of death, im- 
plores you to be very silent ; for Mr. Sliverstone is compos- 
ing, and she need not say how very important it is that he 
should not be disturbed. Unwilling to interrupt any thing 
so serious, you hasten to withdraw, with many apologies ; 
but this Mrs. Sliverstone will by no means allow, observing, 
that she knows you would like to see him, as it is very nat- 
ural you should, and that she is determined to make a trial 
for you, as you are a great favorite. So you are led up 
stairs — still on tiptoe — to the door of a little back room, 
in which, as the lady informs you in a whisper, Mr. Sliver- 
stone always writes. No answer being returned to a couple 
of soft taps, the lady opens the door ; and there, sure enough, 
is Mr. Sliverstone, with dishevelled hair, powdering away, 
with pen, ink, and paper, at a rate which, if he has any 
power of sustaining it, would settle the longest sermon in 
no time. At first he is too much absorbed to be roused by 
this intrusion ; but presently looking up, says faintly, "Ah ! * 
and, pointing to his desk with a weary and languid smile, 
extends his hand and hopes you'll forgive him. Then Mrs. 
Sliverstone sits down beside him, and, taking his hand in 
hers, tells you how that Mr. Sliverstone has been shut up 
there ever since nine o'clock in the morning (it is by this 
time twelve at noon), and how she knows it cannot be good 
for his health, and is very uneasy about it. Unto this Mr. 
Sliverstone replies firmly, that " Lt must be done ; " which 
agonizes Mrs. Sliverstone still more, and she goes on to tell 
.you that such were Mr. Sliverstone's labors last week, — 
what with the buryings, marryings, churchings, christen- 
ings, and all together, — that, when he was going up the 
pulpit-stairs on Sunday evening, he was obliged to hold on 
by the rails, or he would certainly have fallen over into his 
own pew. Mr. Sliverstone, who has been listening and 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 519 

smiling meekly, says, " Not quite so bad as that, not quite 
so bad ! " He admits though, on cross-examination, that he 
was very near falling upon the verger who was following 
him up to bolt the door; but adds, that it was his duty as 
a Christian to fall upon him, if need were, and that he, Mr. 
Sliverstone (and possibly the verger too), ought to glory 
in it. 

This sentiment communicates new impulse to Mrs. Sli- 
verstone, who launches into new praises of Mr. Sliverstone's 
worth and excellence ; to which he listens in the same meek 
silence, save when he puts in a word of self-denial relative 
to some question of fact, as, "Not seventy-two christenings 
that week, my dear; only seventy-one, only seventy-one." 
At length his lady has quite concluded ; and then he says, 
Why should he repine, why should he give way, why 
should he suffer his heart to sink within him ? Is it he 
alone who toils and suffers ? What has she gone through, 
he should like to know ? What does she go through every 
day for him and for society ? 

With such an exordium Mr. Sliverstone launches out into 
glowing praises of the conduct of Mrs. Sliverstone in the 
production of eight young children, and the subsequent 
rearing and fostering of the same ; and thus the husband 
magnifies the wife, and the wife the husband. 

This would be well enough if Mr. and Mrs. Sliverstone 
kept it to themselves, or even to themselves and a friend or 
two ; but they do not. The more hearers they have the 
more egotistical the couple become, and the more anxious 
they are to make believers in their merits. Perhaps this is 
the worst kind of egotism. It has not even the poor excuse 
of being spontaneous, but is the result of a deliberate system 
and malice aforethought. Mere empty-headed conceit 
excites our pity, but ostentatious hypocrisy awakens our 
disgust. 



THE COUPLE WHO CODDLE THEMSELVES. 

Mrs. Merrywinkle's maiden name was Chopper. She 
was the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Chopper. Her father 
died when she was, as the play-books express it, " yet an 
infant ; " and so old Mrs. Chopper, when her daughter mar- 



520 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

ried, made the house of her son-in-law her home from that 
time henceforth, and set up her staff of rest with Mr. and 
Mrs. Merrywinkle. 

Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle are a couple who coddle them- 
selves ; and the venerable Mrs. Chopper is an aider and 
abettor in the same. 

Mr. Merry winkle is a rather lean and long-necked gentle- 
man, middle-aged and middle-sized, and usually troubled 
with a cold in the head. Mrs. Merrywinkle is a delicate- 
looking lady, with very light hair, and is exceedingly sub- 
ject to the same unpleasant disorder. The venerable Mrs. 
Chopper — who is strictly entitled to the appellation, her 
daughter not being very young, otherwise than by courtesy, 
at the time of her marriage, which was some years ago — 
is a mysterious old lady who lurks behind a pair of specta- 
cles, and is afflicted with a chronic disease respecting which 
she has taken a vast deal of medical advice, and referred to 
a vast number of medical books, without meeting any defi- 
nition of symptoms that at all suits her, or enables her to 
say, " That's my complaint." Indeed, the absence of au- 
thentic information upon the subject of this complaint 
would seem to be Mrs. Chopper's greatest ill, as in all other 
respects she is an uncommonly hale and hearty gentle- 
woman. • 

Both Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle wear an extraordinary 
quantity of flannel, and have a habit of putting their feet 
in hot water to an unnatural extent. They likewise in- 
dulged in chamomile tea and such-like compounds, and rub 
themselves on the slightest provocation with camphorated 
spirits and other lotions applicable to mumps, sore-throat, 
rheumatism, or lumbago. 

Mr. Merry winkle's leaving home to go to business on a 
damp or wet morning is a very elaborate affair. He puts 
on wash-leather socks over his stockings, and India-rubber 
shoes above his boots, and wears under his waistcoat a 
cuirass of hair-skin. Besides these precautions, he winds a 
thick shawl round his throat, and blocks up his mouth with 
a large silk handkerchief. Thus accoutred, and furnished 
besides with a great-coat and umbrella, he braves the dan- 
gers of the streets : travelling in severe weather at a gentle 
trot, the better to preserve the circulation, and bringing his 
mouth to the surface to take breath but very seldom, and 
with the utmost caution. His office-door opened, he shoots 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 521 

past his clerk at the same pace, and, diving into his own 
private room, closes the door, examines the window-fasten- 
ings, and gradually unrobes himself, — hanging his pocket- 
handkerchief on the fender to air, and determining to write 
to the newspapers about the fog, which, he says, " has really 
got to that pitch that it is quite unbearable. 

In this last opinion Mrs. Merrywinkle and her respected 
mother fully concur ; for though not present, their thoughts 
and tongues are occupied with the same subject, which is 
their constant theme all day. If anybody happens to call, 
Mrs. Merrywinkle opines that they must assuredly be mad ; 
and her first salutation is, "Why, what in the name of 
goodness can bring you out in such weather ? You know 
you must catch your death." This assurance is corroborated 
by Mrs. Chopper, who adds, in further confirmation, a dis- 
mal legend concerning an individual of her acquaintance, 
who, making a call under precisely parallel circumstances, 
and being then in the best health and spirits, expired in 
forty-eight hours afterwards, of a complication of inflamma- 
tory disorders. The visitor, rendered not altogether com- 
fortable perhaps by this and other precedents, inquires very 
affectionately after Mr. Merrywinkle, but by so doing brings 
about no change of the subject : for Mr. Merrywinkle's 
name is inseparably connected with his complaints, and his 
complaints are inseparably connected with Mrs. Merry- 
winkle's ; and, when these are done with, Mrs. Chopper, 
who has been biding her time, cuts in with the chronic dis- 
order, — a subject upon which the amiable old lady never 
leaves off speaking until she is left alone, and very often 
not then. 

But Mr. Merrywinkle comes home to dinner. He is re- 
ceived by Mrs. Merrywinkle and Mrs. Chopper, who, on his 
remarking that he thinks his feet are damp, turn pale as 
ashes, and drag him up stairs, imploring him to have them 
rubbed directly with a dry coarse towel. Rubbed they are, 
one by Mrs. Merrywinkle and one by Mrs. Chopper, un- 
til the friction causes Mr. Merrywinkle to make horrible 
faces, and look as if he had been smelling very powerful 
onions ; when they desist, and the patient, provided for his 
better security w r ith thick worsted stockings and list slip- 
pers, is borne down stairs to dinner. Now, the dinner is 
always a good one, the appetites of the diners being deli- 
cate, and requiring a little of what Mrs. Merrywinkle 

44* 



522 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

calls " tittivatiou ; " the secret of wliicli is understood to lie 
in good cookery and tasteful spices, and which process 
is so successfully performed in the present instance, that 
both Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle eat a remarkably good 
dinner, and even the afflicted Mrs. Chopper wields her 
knife and fork with much of the spirit and elasticity 
of youth. But Mr. Merrywinkle, in his desire to gratify 
his appetite, is not unmindful of his health ; for he has a 
bottle of carbonate of soda with which to qualify his porter, 
and a little pair of scales in which to weigh it out. Neith- 
er in his anxiety to take care of his body is he. unmindful 
of the welfare of his immortal part, as he always prays 
that for what he is going to receive he may be made truly 
thankful, and, in order that he may be as thankful as 
possible, eats and drinks to the utmost. 

Either from eating and drinking so much, or from being 
the victim of this constitutional infirmity, among others, 
Mr. Merrywinkle, after two or three glasses of wine, falls 
fast asleep ; and he r has scarcely closed his eyes, when Mrs. 
Merrywinkle and Mrs. Chopper fall asleep likewise. It is 
on awakening at tea-time that their most alarming symp- 
toms prevail ; for then Mr. Merrywinkle feels as if his 
temples were tightly bound round with the chain of the street 
door, and Mrs. Merrywinkle as if she had made a hearty 
dinner of half-hundred-weights, and Mrs. Chopper as if 
cold water were running down her back, and oyster-knives 
with sharp points were plunging of their own accord into 
her ribs. Symptoms like these are enough to make people 
peevish ; and no wonder that they remain so until supper- 
time, doing little more than doze and complain, unless Mr. 
Merrywinkle calls out very loud to a servant " to keep that 
draught out," or rushes into the passage to flourish his fist 
in the countenance of the two-penny postman, for daring 
to give such a knock as he had just performed at the door 
of a private gentleman with nerves. 

Supper, coming after dinner, should consist of some 
gentle provocative; and therefore the tittivating art is 
again m*requisition, and again done honor to by Mr. and 
Mrs. Merrywinkle, still comforted and abetted by Mrs. 
Chopper. After supper, it is ten to one but the last-named 
old lady becomes worse, and is led off to bed with the 
chronic complaint in full vigor. Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle, 
having administered to her a warm cordial, which is some- 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 523 

thing of the strongest, then repair to their own room, 
where Mr. Merrywinkle, with his legs and feet in hot 
water, superintends the mulling of some wine which he is 
to drink at the very moment he plunges into bed; while 
Mrs. Merrywinkle, in garments whose nature is unknown 
to, and unimagined by all but married men, takes four 
small pills with a spasmodic look between each, and finally 
comes to something hot and fragrant out of another little 
sauce-pan, which serves as her composing-draught for the 
night. 

There is another kind of couple who coddle themselves, 
and who do so at a cheaper rate and on more spare diet, 
because they are niggardly and parsimonious ; for which 
reason they are kind enough to coddle their visitors too. It 
is unnecessary to describe them ; for our readers may rest 
assured of the accuracy of these general principles : that 
all couples who coddle themselves are selfish and slothful ; 
that they charge- upon every wind that blows, every rain 
that falls, and eveiy vapor that hangs in the air, the evils 
which arise from their own imprudence or the gloom which 
is engendered in their own tempers ; and that all men 
and women, in couples or otherwise, who fall into exclusive 
habits of self-indulgence, and forget their natural sympathy 
and close connection with everybody and every thing in the 
world around them, not only neglect the first duty of life, 
but, by a happy retributive justice, deprive themselves of 
its truest and best enjoyment. 



THE OLD COUPLE. 

They are grandfather and grandmother to a dozen grown 
people, and have great-grandchildren besides ; their bodies 
are bent, their hair is gray, their step tottering and infirm. 
Is this the lightsome pair whose wedding was so merry? 
and have the young couple indeed grown old so soon ? 

It seems but yesterday ; and yet what a host of cares 
and griefs are crowded into the intervening time, which, 
reckoned by them, lengthens out to a century ! How many 
new associations have wreathed themselves about their 



524 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

hearts since then ! The old time is gone ; and a new time 
has come for others, — not for them. They are hut the 
rusting link that feebly joins the two; and is silently loosen- 
ing its hold and dropping asunder. 

It seems but yesterday ; and yet three of their children 
have sunk into the grave, and the tree that shades it has 
grown quite old. One was an infant : they wept for him. 
The next a girl, a slight young thing, too delicate for 
earth : her loss was hard indeed to bear. The third a 
man. That was the worst of all ; but even that grief is 
softened now. 

It seems but yesterday ; and yet how the gay and 
laughing faces of that bright morning have changed, and 
vanished from above ground ! Faint likenesses of some re- 
main about them yet ; but they are very faint, and scarcely 
to be traced. The rest are only seen in dreams ; and even 
they are unlike what they were, in eyes so old and dim. 

One or two dresses from the bridal wardrobe are yet pre- 
served. They are of a quaint and antique fashion, and 
seldom seen except in pictures. White has turned yellow, 
and brighter hues have faded. Do you wonder, child? 
The wrinkled face was once as smooth as yours, the eyes 
as bright, the shrivelled skin as fair and delicate. It is 
the work of hands that have been dust these many years. 

Where are the fairy lovers of that happy day, whose 
annual return comes upon the old man and his wife 
like the echo of some village-bell which has long been 
silent ? Let yonder peevish bachelor, racked by rheumatic 
pains, and quarrelling with the world, let him answer to 
the question. He recollects something of a favorite play- 
mate ; her name was Lucy, — so they tell him. He is not 
sure whether she was married, or went abroad, or died. It 
is a long while ago, and he don't remember. 

Is nothing as it used to be ? Does no one feel or think 
or act as in days of yore ? Yes : there is an aged woman 
who once lived servant with the old lady's father, and is 
sheltered in an alms-house not far of. She is still attached 
to the family, and loves them all ; she nursed the children 
in her lap, and tended in their sickness those who are no 
more. Her old mistress has still something of youth in 
her eyes ; the young ladies are like what she was, but not 
quite so handsome, nor are the gentlemen as stately as Mr. 
Harvey used to be. She has seen a great deal of trouble : 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 525 

her husband and her son died long ago ; but she has got over 
that, and is happy now, — quite happy. 

If ever her attachment to her old protectors was dis- 
turbed by fresher cares and hopes, it has long since resumed 
its former current. It has filled the void in the poor crea- 
ture's heart, and replaced the love of kindred. Death has 
not left her alone ; and this, with a roof above her head, 
and a warm hearth to sit by, makes her cheerful and con- 
tented. Does she remember the marriage of great-grand- 
mamma? Ay, that she does, as well as if it was only 
yesterday. You wouldn't think it to look at her now, and 
perhaps she ought not to say so of herself ; but she was as 
smart a young garl then as you'd wish to see. She recol- 
lects she took a friend of hers up stairs to see Miss Emma 
dressed for church. Her name was — ah! she forgets the 
name^ but she remembers that she was a very pretty girl, 
and that she married not long afterwards, and lived — it 
has quite passed out of her mind where she lived ; but she 
knows she had a bad husband, who used her ill, and that 
she died in Lambeth workhouse. Dear, dear, in Lambeth 
workhouse ! 

And the old couple, — have they no comfort or enjoy- 
ment of existence ? See them among their grandchildren 
and great-grandchildren : how garrulous they are ! how they 
compare one with another, and insist on likenesses which 
no one else can see ! how gently the old lady lectures the 
girls on the points of breeding and decorum, and points 
the moral by anecdotes of herself in her young days ! 
how the old gentleman chuckles over boyish feats and 
roguish tricks, and tells long stories of a "barring-out" 
achieved at the school he went to, which was very wrong, 
he tells the boys, and never to be imitated of course, but 
which he cannot help letting them know was very pleasant 
too, — especially when he kissed the master's niece. This 
last, however, is a point on which the old lady is very 
tender ; for she considers it a shocking and indelicate thing 
to talk about, and always says so whenever it is mentioned, 
never failing to observe that he ought to be very penitent 
for having been so sinful. So the old gentleman gets no 
further ; and what the schoolmaster's niece said afterwards 
(which he is always going to tell) is lost to posterity. 

The old gentleman is eighty years old to-day. " Eighty 
years old, Crofts, and never had a headache," he tells the 



526 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

barber who staves him (the barber being a young fellow, 
and very subject to that complaint). " That's a great age, 
Crofts," says the old gentleman. " I don't think it's sich 
a wery great age, sir," replies the barber. " Crofts," rejoins 
the old gentleman, " you're talking nonsense to me. Eighty 
not a great age ? " — " It's a wery great age, sir, for a gen- 
tleman to be as healthy and active as you are," returns 
the barber ; " but my grandfather, sir, he Was ninety-four." 
" You don't mean that, Crofts ? " says the old gentleman. 
" I do, indeed, sir,' retorts the barber, " and as wiggerous 
as Julius Caesar, my grandfather was." The old gentle- 
man muses a little time, and then says, " What did he die 
of, Crofts ? " — " He died accidentally, sir," returns the 
barber: "he didn't mean to do it. He always would go 
a-running about the streets, — walking never satisfied his 
spirit : and he run against a post, and died of a hurt in 
his chest." The old gentleman says no more until the 
shaving is concluded, and then he gives Crofts half-a-crown 
to drink his health. He is a little doubtful of the barber's 
veracity afterwards ; and, telling the anecdote to the old 
lady, affects to make very light of it, — though to be sure, 
(he adds), there was old Parr, and in some parts of England 
ninety-five or so is a common age, — quite a common age. 

This morning the old couple are cheerful but serious ; re- 
calling old times as well as they can remember them, and 
dwelling upon many passages in their past lives which the 
day brings to mind. The old lady reads aloud, in a tremu- 
lous voice, out of a great Bible ; and the old gentleman, 
with his hand to his ear, listens with profound respect. 
When the book is closed, they sit silent for a short space, 
and afterwards resume their conversation, with a reference 
perhaps to their dead children, as a subject not unsuited to 
that they have just left. By degrees they are led to con- 
sider which of those who survive are the most like those 
dearly remembered objects ; and so they fall into a less 
solemn strain, and become cheerful again. 

How many people in all, grandchildren, great-grandchil- 
dren, and one or two intimate friends of the family, dine 
together to-day at the eldest son's to congratulate the old 
couple, and wish them many happy returns, is a calculation 
beyond our powers ; but this we know,, that the old couple 
no sooner present themselves, very sprucely and carefully 
attired, than there is a violent shouting and rushing for- 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 52* 

ward of the younger branches with all manner of presents, 
such as pocket-books, pencil-cases, pen-wipers, watch-papers, 
pincushions, sleeve-buckles, worked slippers, watch-guards, 
and even a nutmeg-grater, — the latter article being pre- 
sented by a very chubby and very little boy, who exhibits 
it in great triumph as an extraordinary variety. The old 
couple's emotion at these tokens of remembrance occasions 
quite a pathetic scene, of which the chief ingredients are a 
vast quantity of kissing and hugging, and repeated wipings 
of small eyes and noses with small square pocket-handker- 
chiefs, which don't come at all easily out of small pockets. 
Even the peevish bachelor is moved; and he says, as he 
presents the old gentleman with a queer sort of antique 
ring from his own finger, that he'll be de'ed if he doesn't 
think he looks younger than he did ten years ago. 

But-the great time is after dinner, when the dessert and 
wine are on the table, which is pushed back to make plenty 
of room, and they are all gathered in a large circle round 
the fire ; for it is then — the glasses being filled, and every- 
body ready to drink the toast — that two great-grandchil- 
dren rush out at a given signal, and presently return, drag- 
ging in old Jane Adams, leaning upon her crutched stick, 
and trembling with age and pleasure. Who so popular as 
poor old Jane, nurse and story-teller in' ordinary to two 
generations ! and who so happy as she, striving to bend her 
stiff limbs into a courtesy, while tears of pleasure steal 
down her withered cheeks ! 

The old couple sit side by side, and the old time seems 
like yesterday indeed. Looking back upon the path they 
have travelled, its dust and ashes disappear; the flowers 
that withered long ago show brightly again upon its borders, 
and they grow young once more in the youth of those about 
them. 



CONCLUSION. 



We have taken for the subjects of the foregoing moral 
essays twelve samples of married couples, carefully selected 
from a large stock on hand, open to the inspection of all 
comers. These samples are intended for the benefit of the 



528 SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 

rising generation of both sexes, and, for their more easy and 
pleasant information, have been separately ticketed and 
labelled in the manner they have seeii. 

We have purposely excluded from consideration the 
couple in which the lady reigns paramount and supreme, 
holding such cases to be of a very unnatural kind, and, like 
hideous births and other monstrous deformities, only to b^ 
discreetly and sparingly exhibited. 

And here our self-imposed task would have ended, but 
that to those young ladies and gentlemen who are yet re- 
volving singly round the church, awaiting the advent of 
that time when the mysterious laws of attraction shall draw 
them towards it in couples, we are desirous of addressing a 
few last words. 

Before marriage, and afterwards, let them learn to centre 
all their hopes of real and lasting happiness in their own 
fireside; let them cherish the faith that in home, and all 
the English virtues which the love of home engenders, lies 
the only true source of domestic felicity ; let them believe 
that rour>d the household gods contentment and tranquillity 
cluster in their gentlest and most graceful forms, and that 
many weary hunters of happiness through the noisy world 
have learnt this truth too late, and found a cheerful spirit 
and a quiet mind only at home at last. 

How much may depend on the education of daughters 
and the conduct of mothers ; how much of the brightest 
part of our old national character may be perpetuated by 
their wisdom or frittered away by their folly; how much 
of it may have been lost already, and how much more in 
danger of vanishing every day, — are questions too weighty 
for discussion here, but well deserving a little serious con- 
sideration from all young couples, nevertheless. 

To that one young couple on whose bright destiny the 
thoughts of nations are fixed may the youth of England 
look, and not in vain, for an example. From that one 
couple, blest and favored as they are, may they learn that 
even the glare and glitter* of a court, the splendor of a 
palace, and the pomp and glory of a throne, yield in their 
power of conferring happiness to domestic worth and virtue ! 
From that one young couple may they learn that the crown 
of a great empire, costly and jewelled though it be, gives 
place in the estimation of a queen to the plain gold ring 
that links her woman's nature to that of tens of thousands 



SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES. 529 

of her humble subjects, and guards in her woman's heart 
one secret store of tenderness, whose proudest boast shall 
be that it knows no royalty save Nature's own, and no 
pride of birth but being the child of Heaven ! 

So shall the highest young couple in the land for once 
hear the truth, when men throw up their caps, and cry, with 
loving shouts, — 

God bless them! 

45 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

531 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 



A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 

I ha© been looking, yesternight, through the famous 
" Dance of Death," and to-day the grim old woodcuts arose 
in my mind with the new significance of a ghastly monotony 
not to be found in the original. The weird skeleton rattled 
along the streets before me, and struck fiercely ; but it was 
never at the pains of assuming a disguise. It played on 
no dulcimer here, was crowned with no flowers, waved no 
plume, minced in no flowing robe or train, lifted no wine- 
cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, counted no gold. It was 
simply a bare, gaunt, famished skeleton, slaying its way 
along. 

The borders of Ratcliffe and Stepney, eastward of Lon- 
don, and giving on the impure river, were the scene of 
this uncompromising dance of death, upon a drizzling 
November day. A squalid maze of streets, courts, and 
alleys of miserable houses let out in single rooms. A 
wilderness of dirt, rags, and hunger. A mud-desert, chiefly 
inhabited by a tribe from whom employment has departed, 
or to whom it comes but fitfully and rarely. They are not 
skilled mechanics in any wise. They are but laborers, — 
lock-laborers, waterside-laborers, coal-porters, ballast-heav- 
ers, such like hewers of wood and drawers of water. But 
they have come into existence, and they propagate their 
wretched race. 

One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed to 
play off here. It had stuck election-bills on the walls, 
which the wind and rain had deteriorated into suitable 
rags. It had even summed up the state of the poll, in 

45* 533 



534 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

chalk, on the shutters of one ruined house. It adjured the 
free and independent starvers to vote for Thisman and vote 
for Thatman; not to plump, as they valued the state of 
parties and the national prosperity (both of great impor- 
tance to them, I think) ; but, by returning Thisman and 
Thatman, each 'naught without the other, to compound a 
glorious and immortal whole. Surely the skeleton is no- 
where more cruelly ironical in the original monkish idea ! 

Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of This- 
man and Thatman, and of the public blessing called Party, 
for staying the degeneracy, physical and moral, of many 
thousands (who shall say how many ?) of the English race ; 
for devising employment useful to the community for those 
who want but to work and live ; for equalizing rates, culti- 
vating waste lands, facilitating emigration, and, above all 
things, saving and utilizing the oncoming generations, and 
thereby changing ever-growing national weakness into 
strength : pondering in my mind, I say, these . hopeful ex- 
ertions, I turned down a narrow street to look into a house 
or two. 

It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side. Nearly 
all the outer doors of the houses stood open. I took the 
first entry, and knocked at a parlor-door. Might I come in ? 
I might, if I plased, sur. 

The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long 
strips of wood, about some wharf or barge ; and they had 
just now been thrust into the otherwise empty grate to 
make two iron pots boil. There was some fish in one, and 
there were some potatoes in the other. The flare of the 
burning wood enabled me to see a table, and a broken chair 
or so, and some old cheap crockery ornaments about the 
chimney-piece. It was not until I had spoken with the 
woman a few minutes, that I saw a horrible brown heap on 
the floor in a corner, which, but for previous experience in 
this dismal wise, I might not have suspected to be " the 
bed." There was something thrown upon it ; and I asked 
what that was. 

"'Tis the poor craythur that stays here, sur; and'tis 
very bad she is, and 'tis very bad she's been this long time, 
and 'tis better she'll never be, and 'tis slape she does all 
day, and 'tis wake she does all night, and 'tis the lead, 
sur. 1 ' 

"The what?" 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 535 

"The lead, sur. Sure 'tis the lead-mills, where the 
women gets took on at eighteen-pence a day, sur, when 
they makes application early enough, and is lucky and 
wanted ; and 'tis lead-pisoned she is, sur, and some of them 
gets lead-pisoned soon, and some of them gets lead-pisoned 
later, and some, but not many, niver ; and 'tis all according 
to the constitooshun, sur, and some constitooshuns is strong, 
and some is weak ; and her constitooshun is lead-pisoned, 
bad as can be, sur ; and her brain is coming out at her ear, 
and it hurts her dreadful ; and that's what it is, and niver 
no more, and niver no less, sur." 

The sick young woman moaning here, the speaker bent 
over her, took a bandage from her head, and threw open a 
back door to let in the daylight upon it, from the smallest 
and most miserable back-yard I ever saw. 

"That's what cooms from her, sur, being lead-pisoned ; 
and it eooms from her night and day, the poor, sick craythur ; 
and the pain of it is dreadful; and God he knows that my 
husband has walked the sthreets these four days, being a 
laborer, and is walking them now, and is ready to work, and 
no work for him, and no fire and no food but the bit in the 
pot, and no more than ten shillings in a fortnight; God be 
good to us ! and it is poor we are, and dark it is and could it 
is indeed." 

Knowing that I could compensate myself thereafter for 
my self-denial, if I saw fit, I had resolved that I would give 
nothing in the course of these visits. I did this to try the 
people. I may state at once that my closest observation 
could not detect any indication whatever of an expectation 
that I would give money : they were grateful to be talked 
to about their miserable affairs, and sympathy was plainly 
a comfort to them ; but they neither asked for money in 
any case, nor showed the least trace of surprise or disap- 
pointment or resentment at my giving none. 

The woman's married daughter had by this time come 
down from her room on the floor above, to join in the con- 
versation. She herself had been to the lead-mills very 
early that morning to be " took on," but had not succeeded. 
She had four children ; and her husband, also a water-side 
laborer, and then out seeking work, seemed in no better 
case as to finding it than her father. She was English, 
and by nature of a buxom figure and cheerful. Both in 
her poor dress and in her mother's there was an effort to 



536 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

keep up some appearance of neatness. She knew all about 
the sufferings of the unfortunate invalid; and all about the 
lead-poisoning, and how the symptoms came on, and how 
they grew, — having often seen them. The very smell 
when you stood inside the door of the works was enough 
to knock you down, she said; yet she was going back again 
f to get "took on." What could she do? Better be ulcer- 
ated and paralyzed for eighteen-pence a day, while it lasted, 
than see the children starve. 

A dark and squalid cupboard in this room, touching the 
back door and all manner of offence, had been for some time 
the sleeping place of the sick young womam But the nights 
being now wintry, and the blankets and coverlets "gone to the 
leaving shop," she lay all night where she lay all day, and 
was lying then. The woman of the room, her husband, 
this most miserable patient, and two others, lay on the one 
brown heap together for warmth. 

" God bless you, sir, and thank you ! " were the parting 
words from these people, — gratefully spoken too, — with 
which I left this place. 

Some streets away, I tapped at another parlor-door on 
another ground-floor. Looking in, I found a man, his wife, 
and four children, sitting at a washing-stool by way of 
table, at their dinner of bread and infused- tea-leaves. 
There was a very scanty cinderous fire in the grate by 
which they sat ; and there was a tent bedstead in the room 
with a bed upon it and a coverlet. The man did not rise 
when I went in, nor during my stay, but civilly inclined his 
head on my pulling off my hat, and, in answer to my in- 
quiry whether I might ask him a question or two, said, 
" Certainly." There being a window at each end of this 
room, back and front, it might have been ventilated ; but 
it was shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and was very 
sickening. 

The wife, an intelligent, quick woman, rose and stood at 
her husband's elbow ; and he glanced up at her as if for 
help. It soon appeared that he was rather deaf. He was 
a slow, simple fellow of about thirty. 

" What was he by trade ? " 

" Gentleman asks what are you by t trade, John ? " 

" I am a boilermaker ; " looking about him with an ex- 
ceedingly perplexed air, as if for a boiler that had unac- 
countably vanished. 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. . 537 

" He ain't a mechanic, you understand, sir," the wife put 
in : " he's only a laborer." 

"Are you in work'? " 

He looked up at his wife again. " Gentlemen says are 
you in work, John ? " 

" In work ! " cried this forlorn boilermaker, staring 
aghast at his wife, and then working his vision's way very 
slowly round to me : " Lord, no ! " 

" Ah, he ain't, indeed ! " said the poor woman, shaking 
her head, as she looked at the four children in succession, 
and then at him. . 

a Work ! " said the boilermaker, still seeking that evap- 
orated boiler, first in my countenance, then in the air, and 
then in the features of his second son at his knee : " I wish 
I was in work ! I haven't had more than a day's work to 
do this Ihree weeks." 

" How have you lived ? " 

A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the face of the 
would-be boilermaker, as he stretched out the short sleeve 
of his threadbare canvas jacket, and replied, pointing her 
out, " On the work of the wife." 

I forgot where boilermaking had gone to, or where he 
supposed it had gone to ; but he added some resigned in- 
formation on that head, coupled with an expression of his 
belief that it was never coming back. 

The cheery helpfulness of the wife was very remarkable. 
She did slop-work ; made pea-jackets. She produced the 
pea-jacket then in hand, and spread it out upon the bed, — 
the only piece of furniture in the room on which to spread 
it. She showed how much of it she made, and how much 
was afterwards finished off by the machine. According to 
her calculation at the moment, deducting what her trim- 
ming cost her, she got for making a pea-jacket tenpence 
half-penny, and she could make one in something less than 
two days. 

But, you see, it come to her through two hands, and of 
course it didn't come through the second hand for nothing. 
Why did it come through the second hand at all ? Why, 
this way. The second hand took the risk of the given-out 
work, you see. If she had money enough to pay the secu- 
rity deposit, — call it two pound, — she could get the work 
from the first hand, and so the second would not have to be 
deducted for. But, having no money at all, the second 



538 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

hand come in and took its profit, and so the whole worked 
down to tenpence half-penny. Having explained all this 
with great intelligence, even with some little pride, and 
without a whine or murmur, she folded her work again, sat 
down by her husband's side at the washing-stool, and re- 
sumed her dinner of dry bread. Mean as the meal was, on 
the bare board, with its old gallipots for cups, and what not 
other sordid makeshifts ; shabby as the woman was in 
dress, and toning down towards the Bosjesman color, with 
want of nutriment and washing, — there was positively a 
dignity in her, as the family anchor just holding the poor 
shipwrecked boilermaker's bark. When I left the room, 
the boilermaker's eyes were slowly turned towards her, as if 
his last hope of ever again seeing that vanished boiler lay 
in her direction. 

These people had never applied for parish relief but once ; 
and that was when the husband met with a disabling acci- 
dent at his work. 

Not many doors from here, I went into a room on the 
first floor. The woman apologized for its being in "an 
untidy mess." The day was Saturday, and she was boiling 
the children's clothes in a saucepan on the hearth. There 
was nothing else into which she could have put them. 
There was no crockery, or tinware, or tub, or bucket. 
There was an old gallipot or two, and there was a broken 
bottle or so, and there were some broken boxes for seats. 
The last small scraping of coals left was raked together in 
a corner of the floor. There were some rags in an open 
cupboard, also on the floor. In a corner of the room was 
a crazy old French bedstead, with a man lying on his back 
upon it in a ragged pilot jacket, and rough oil-skin fantail 
hat. The room was perfectly black. It was difficult to 
believe, at first, that it was not purposely colored black, the 
walls were so begrimed. 

As I stood opposite the woman boiling the children's 
clothes, — she had not even a piece of soap to wash them 
with, — and apologizing for her occupation, I could take in 
all these things without appearing to notice them, and could 
even correct my inventory. I had missed, at the first 
glance, some half a pound of bread in the otherwise empty 
safe, an old red ragged crinoline hanging on the handle of 
the door by which I had entered, and certain fragments of 
rusty iron scattered on the floor, which looked like broken 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 539 

tools and a piece of stove-pipe. A child stood looking on. 
On the box nearest to the fire sat two younger children ; 
one a delicate and pretty little creature, whom the other 
sometimes kissed. 

This woman, like the last, was wofully shabby, and was 
degenerating to the Bosjesman complexion. But her figure, 
and the ghost of a certain vivacity about her, and the spec- 
tre of a dimple in her cheek, carried my memory strangely 
back to the old days of the Adelphi Theatre, London, when 
Mrs. Fitzwilliam was the friend of Victorine. 

" May I ask you what your husband is ? " 

"He's a coal-porter, sir," — with a glance and a sigh 
towards the bed. 

" Is he out of work ? " 

" Oh, yes, sir ! and work's at all times very, very scanty 
with him ; and now he's laid up." 

" It's my legs," said the man upon the bed. " I'll unroll 
'em." And immediately began. 

" Have you any older children ? " 

" I have a daughter that does the needle-work, and I 
have a son that does what he can. She's at her work now, 
and he's trying for work." 

" Do they live here ? " 

" They sleep here. They can't afford to pay more rent, 
and so they come here at night. The rent is very hard 
upon us. It's rose upon us too, now, — sixpence a week, — 
on account of these new charges in the law, about the rates. 
We are a week behind ; the landlord's been shaking and 
rattling at that door frightfully ; he says he'll turn us out. 
I don't know what's to come of it." 

The man upon the bed ruefully interposed, " Here's my 
legs. The skin's broke, besides the swelling. I have had 
a many kicks, working, one way and another." 

He looked at his legs (which were much discolored and 
misshapen) for a while, and then appearing to remember 
that they were not popular with his family, rolled them up 
again, as if they were something in the nature of maps or 
plans that were not wanted to be referred to, lay hopelessly 
down on his back once more with his fantail hat over his 
face, and stirred not. 

"Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that cup- 
board?" 

" Yes," replied the woman. 



540 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

"With the children?" 

" Yes. We have to get together for warmth. We have 
little to cover us." 

" Have you nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread 
I see there ? " 

"Nothing. And we had the rest of the loaf for our 
breakfast, with water." I don't know what's to come of it." 

" Have you no prospect of improvement ? " 

" If my eldest son earns any thing to-day, he'll bring it 
home. Then we shall have something to eat to-night, and 
may be able to do something towards the rent. If not, I 
don't know what's to come of it." 

" This is a sad state of things." 

"Yes, sir; it's a hard, hard life. Take care of the stairs 
as you go, sir, — they're broken — , and good-day, sir ! " 

These people had a mortal dread of entering the work- 
house, and received no out-of-door relief. 

In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very 
decent woman with five children, — the last a baby, and 
she herself a patient of the parish-doctor, — to whom, her 
husband being in the hospital, the Union allowed, for the 
support of herself and family, four shillings a week and five 
loaves. I suppose when Thisman, M.P., and Thatman, 
M.P., and the Public-blessing Party, lay their heads to- 
gether in course of time, and come to an equalization of 
rating, she may go down to the dance of death to the 
tune of sixpence more. 

I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I 
could not bear the contemplation of the children. Such 
heart as I had summoned to sustain me against the miseries 
of the adults failed me when I looked at the children. I 
saw how young they were, how hungry, how serious and 
still. I thought of them, sick and dying in those lairs. I 
think of them dead without anguish ; but to think of them 
so suffering and so dying quite unmanned me. 

Down by the river's bank in E-atcliffe, I was turning up- 
ward by a side-street, therefore, to regain the railway, when 
my eyes rested on the inscription across the road, " East 
London Children's Hospital." I could scarcely have seen 
an inscription better suited to my frame of mind ; and I 
went across and went straight in. 

I found the children's hospital established in an old sail- 
loft or storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the sim- 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 541 

plest means. There were trap-doors in the floors, where 
goods had been hoisted up and down ; heavy feet and heavy 
weights had started every knot in the well-trodden plank- 
ing : inconvenient bulks and beams and awkward staircases 
perplexed my passage through the wards. But I found it 
airy, sweet, and clean. In its seven and thirty beds I saw 
but little beauty ; for starvation in the second or third gen- 
eration takes a pinched look : but I saw the sufferings both 
of infancy and childhood tenderly assuaged ; I heard the 
little patients answering to pet playful names, the light 
touch of a delicate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms 
for me to pity ; and the claw-like little hands, as she^did 
so, twined themselves lovingly around her wedding-ring. 

One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael's 
angels. The tiny head was bandaged for water on the 
brain ; and it was suffering with acute bronchitis too, and 
made from time to time a plaintive, though not impatient 
or complaining, little sound. The smooth curve of the 
cheeks and of the chin was faultless in its condensation of 
infantine beauty, and the large bright eyes were most 
lovely. It happened, as I stopped at the foot of the bed, 
that these eyes rested upon mine with that wistful expres- 
sion of wondering thoughtfulness which we all know some- 
times in very little children. They remained fixed on mine, 
and never turned from me while I stood there. When the 
utterance of that plaintive sound shook the little form, the 
gaze still remained unchanged. I felt as though the child 
implored me to tell the story of the little hospital in 
which it was sheltered to any gentle heart I could address. 
Laying my world-worn hand upon the little unmarked 
clasped hand at the chin, I gave it a silent promise that I 
would do so. 

A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have 
bought and fitted up this building for its present noble use, 
and have quietly settled themselves in it as its medical 
officers and directors. Both have had considerable practi- 
cal experience of medicine and surgery; he as house-sur- 
geon of a great London hospital; she as a very earnest 
student, tested by severe examination, and also as a nurse 
of the sick poor during the prevalence of cholera. 

With every qualification to lure them away, with youth 
and accomplishments and tastes and habits that can have 
no response in any breast near them, close begirt by every 

45 



542 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

repulsive circumstance inseparable from such a neighbor- 
hood, there they dwell. They live in the hospital itself, 
and their rooms are on its first floor. Sitting at their 
dinner-table, they could hear the cry of one of the children 
in pain. The lady's piano, drawing-materials, books, and 
other such evidences of refinement are as much a part of 
the rough place as the iron bedsteads of the little patients. 
They are put to shifts for room, like passengers on board 
ship. The dispenser of medicines .(attracted to them not 
by self-interest, but by their own magnetism and that of 
their cause) sleeps in a recess in the dining-room, and has 
his washing apparatus in the sideboard. 

Their contented manner of making the best of the 
things around them, I found so pleasantly inseparable from 
their usefulness! Their pride in this partition that we 
put up ourselves, or in that partition that we took down, 
or in that other partition that we moved, or in the stove 
that was given us for the waiting-room, or in our nightly 
conversion of the little consulting-room into a smoking- 
room ! Their admiration of the situation, if we could only 
get rid of its* one objectionable incident, the coal-yard at the 
back ! " Our hospital carriage, presented by a friend, and 
very useful." That was my presentation to a perambulator, 
for which a coach-house had been discovered in a corner 
down stairs, just large enough to hold it. Colored prints, in 
all stages of prepararation for being added to those already 
decorating the wards, were plentiful ; a charming wooden 
phenomenon of a bird, with an impossible top-knot, who 
ducked his head when you set a counter weight going, had 
been inaugurated as a public statue that very morning ; 
and trotting about among the beds, on familiar terms with 
all the patients, was a comical mongrel dog, called Poodles. 
This comical dog (quite atonic in himself) was found char- 
acteristically starving at the door of the institution, and 
was taken in and fed, and has lived here ever since. An 
admirer of his mental endowments has presented him with 
a collar bearing the legend, " Judge not Poodles by exter- 
nal appearances." He was merrily wagging his tail on a 
boy's pillow when he made this modest appeal to me. 

When this hospital was first opened, in January of the 
present year, the people could not possibly conceive but 
that somebody paid for the services rendered there; and 
were disposed to claim them as a right, and to find fault if 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 543 

out of temper. They soon came to understand the case 
better, and have much increased in gratitude. The mothers 
of the patients avail themselves very freely of the visiting 
rules ; the fathers often on Sundays. There is an unreason- 
able (but still, I think, touching and intelligible) tendency 
in the parents to take a child away to its wretched home, 
if on the point of death. One boy who had been thus 
carried off on a rainy night, when in a violent state of in- 
flammation, and who had been afterwards brought back, 
had been recovered with exceeding difficulty ; but he was a 
jolly boy, with a specially strong interest in his dinner, 
when I saw him. 

Insufficient food and unwholesome living are the main 
causes of disease among these small patients. So nourish- 
ment, cleanliness, and ventilation are the main remedies. 
Discharged patients are looked after, and invited to come 
and dine now and then ; so are certain famishing creatures 
who were never patients. Both the lady and the gentle- 
man are well acquainted, not only with the histories of the 
patients and their families, but with the characters and 
circumstances of great numbers of their neighbors: of 
these they keep a register. It is their common experience, 
that people, sinking down by inches into deeper and deeper 
poverty, will conceal it, even ffom them, if possible, unto 
the very last extremity. 

The nurses of this hospital are all young, — ranging, say, 
from nineteen to four and twenty. They have even within 
these narrow limits, what many well-endowed hospitals 
would not give them, a comfortable room of their own in 
which to take their meals. It is a beautiful truth, that 
interest in the children and sympathy with their sorrows 
bind these young women to their places far more strongly 
% than any other consideration could. The best skilled of 
the nurses came originally from a kindred neighborhood, 
almost as poor ; and she knew how much the work was 
needed. She is a fair dressmaker. The hospital cannot 
pay her as many pounds in the year as there are months in 
it ; and one day the lady regarded it as a duty to speak to 
her about her improving her prospects and following her 
" trade. " No," she said : she could never be so useful or so 
happy elsewhere any more; she must stay among the 
children. And she stays. One of the nurses, as I passed 
her ; was washing a baby-boy. Liking her pleasant face, I 



544 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

stopped to speak to her charge, — a common, bullet-headed, 
frowning charge enough, laying hold of his own nose with 
a slippery grasp, and. staring very solemnly out of a 
blanket. The melting of the pleasant face into -delighted 
smiles, as this young gentleman gave an unexpected kick, 
and laughed at me, was almost worth my previous pain. 

An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called 
"The Children's Doctor." As I parted from my chil- 
dren's doctor, now in question, I saw in his easy black 
necktie, in his loose buttoned black frock-coat, in his pen- 
sive face, in the flow of his dark hair, in his eye-lashes, in 
the very turn of his mustache, the exact realization of the 
Paris artist's ideal as it was presented on the stage. But 
no romancer that I know of has had the boldness to pre- 
figure the life and home of this young husband and young 
wife in the Children's Hospital in the east of London. 

I came away from E-atcliffe by the Stepney railway sta- 
tion to the terminus at Fenchurch Street. Any one who 
will reverse that route may retrace my steps. 



ABOARD SHIP. 

Mv journeys as uncommercial traveller for the firm of 
Human-Interest Brothers have not slackened since I last 
reported of them, but have kept me continually on the 
move. I remain in the same idle employment. I never 
solicit an order, I never get any commission, I am the rolling 
stone that gathers no moss, — unless any should by chance 
be found among these samples. 

Some half a year ago, I found myself in my idlest, 
dreamiest, and least accountable condition altogether, on 
board ship, in the .harbor of the city of New York, in the 
United States of America. Of all the good ships afloat, 
mine was the good steamship "Russia," Capt. Cook, 
Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool. What more could I 
wish for? 

I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage. My 
salad-days, when I was green of visage and sea-sick, being 
gone with better things (and no worse), no coming event 
cast its shadow before. 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 545 

I might but a few moments previously have imitated 

Sterne, and said, " ' And yet, methinks, Eugenius,' — laying 
my forefinger wistfully on his coat-sleeve, thus, — c and yet, 
methinks, Eugenius, 'tis but sorry work to part with thee, 
for what fresh fields, . . . my dear Eugenius, . . . can be 
fresher than thou art, and in what pastures new shall I 
find Eliza, or, call her Eugenius, if thou wilt, Annie, ' " 
— I say I might have done this ; but Eugenius was gone, 
and I hadn't done it. 

I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck, 
watching the working of the ship very slowly about, that 
she might head for England. It was high-noon on a most 
brilliant day in April, and the beautiful bay was glorious 
and glowing. Full many a time, on shore there, had I seen 
the snow come down, down, down (itself like down), until it 
lay deep in all the ways of men, and particularly, as it 
seemed, in my way, for I had not gone dry-shod many 
hours for months. Within two or three days last past had 
I watched the feathery fall setting in with the ardor of a 
new idea, instead of dragging at the skirts of a worn-out 
winter, and permitting glimpses of a fresh young spring. 
But a bright sun and a clear sky had melted the snow in 
the great crucible of nature ; and it had been poured out 
again that morning over sea and land, transformed into 
myriads of gold and silver sparkles. 

The ship was fragrant with flowers. Something of the 
old Mexican passion for flowers may have gradually passed 
into North America, where flowers are luxuriously grown, 
and tastefully combined in the richest profusion; but, be 
that as it may, such gorgeous farewells in flowers had come 
on board, that the small officer's cabin on deck, which I 
tenanted, bloomed over into the adjacent scuppers, and 
banks of other flowers that it couldn't hold made a garden 
of the unoccupied tables in the passengers' saloon. These 
delicious scents of the shore, mingling with the fresh airs 
of the sea, made the atmosphere a dreamy, an enchanting 
one. And so, with the watch aloft setting all the sails, 
and with the screw below revolving at a mighty rate, and 
occasionally giving the ship an angry shake for resisting, I 
fell into my idlest ways, and lost myself. 

As, for instance, whether it was I lying there, or some 
other entity even more mysterious, was a matter I was far 
too lazy to look into. What did it signify to me if it were 

46* 



546 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

I ? or to the more mysterious entity, if it were he ? 
Equally as to the remembrances that drowsily floated by 
me, or by him, why ask when or where the things hap- 
pened ? Was it not enough that they befell at some time, 
somewhere ? 

There was that assisting at the church service on board 
another steamship, one Sunday, in a stiff breeze. Perhaps 
on the passage out. No matter. Pleasant to hear the 
ship's bells go as like church-bells as they could ; pleasant 
to see the watch off duty mustered and come in : best hats, 
best Guernseys, washed hands and faces, smoothed heads. 
But then arose a set of circumstances so rampantly comi- 
cal, that no check which the gravest intentions could put 
upon them would hold them in hand. Thus the scene. 
Some seventy passengers assembled at the saloon tables. 
Prayer-books on tables. Ship rolling heavily. Pause. No 
minister ! Eumor has related that a modest young clergy- 
man on board has responded to the captain's request that 
he will officiate. Pause again, and very heavy rolling. 

Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and two strong 
stewards skate in, supporting minister between them. Gen- 
eral appearance as of somebody picked up, drunk and in- 
capable, and under conveyance to station-house. Stoppage, 
pause, and particularly heavy rolling. Stewards watch 
their opportunity, and balance themselves, but cannot bal- 
ance minister ; who, struggling with a drooping head and 
a backward tendency, seems determined to return below, 
while they are as determined that he shall be got to the 
reading-desk in mid-saloon. Desk portable, sliding away 
down a long table, and aiming itself at the breasts of vari- 
ous members of the congregation. Here the double doors, 
which have been carefully closed by other stewards, fly open 
again, and worldly passenger tumbles in, seemingly with 
pale-ale designs : who, seeking friend, says " Joe ! " Per- 
ceiving incongruity, says, " Hullo ! Beg yer pardon ! n 
and tumbles out again. All this time the congregation 
have been breaking up into sects, — as the manner of con- 
gregations often is, — each sect sliding away by itself, and 
all pounding the weakest sect which slid first into the cor- 
ner. Utmost point of dissent soon attained in every corner, 
and violent rolling. Stewards at length make a dash ; 
conduct minister to the mast in the centre of the saloon, 
which he embraces with both arms; skate out; and leave 
him in that condition to arrange affairs with flock. 



NEW UNCOMMEECIAL SAMPLES. 547 

There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship 
read the service. It was quiet and impressive, until we 
fell upon the dangerous and perfectly unnecessary experi- 
ment of striking up a hymn. After it was given out, we 
all rose, but everybody left it to somebody else to begin. 
Silence resulting, the officer (no singer himself) rather re- 
proachfully gave us the first line again, upon which a rosy 
pippin of an old gentleman, remarkable throughout the 
passage for his cheerful politeness, gave a little stamp with 
his boot (as if he were leading off a country dance), and 
blithely warbled us into a show of joining. At the end of 
the first verse we became, through these tactics, so much 
refreshed and encouraged, that none of us, howsoever un- 
melodious, would submit to be left out of the second verse ; 
while as to the third we lifted up our voices in a sacred 
howl-tnat left it doubtful whether we were the more boast- 
ful of the sentiments we united in professing, or of profess- 
ing them with a most discordant defiance of time and 
tune. 

" Lord bless us ! " thought I, when the fresh remembrance 
of these things made me laugh heartily, alone in the dead 
water-gurgling waste of the night, what time I was wedged 
into my berth by a wooden bar, or I must have rolled out 
of it, " what errand was I then upon, and to what Abyssin- 
ian point had public events then marched ? No matter as 
to me. And as to them, if the wonderful popular rage for 
a plaything (utterly confounding in its inscrutable un- 
reason) had not then* lighted on a poor young savage boy, 
and a poor old screw of a horse, and hauled the first off by the 
hair of his princely head to ' inspect ' British volunteers, and 
hauled the second off by the hair of his equine tail to the 
Crystal Palace, why so much the better for all of us outside 
Bedlam!" 

So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking 
myself would I like to show the grog distribution in " the 
fiddle " at noon to the Grand United Amalgamated Total 
Abstinence Society. Yes, I think I should. I think it • 
would do them good to smell the rum, under the circum- 
stances. Over the grog, mixed in a bucket, presides the 
boatswain's mate, small tin can in hand. Enter the crew, 
the guilty consumers, the grown-up brood of Giant De- 
spair, in contradistinction to the band of youthful angel 
Hope. Some in boots, some in leggins, some in tarpaulin 



548 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

overalls, some in frocks, some in pea-coats, a very few in 
jackets, most with sou'wester hats, all with something 
rough and rugged round the throat ; all, dripping salt 
water where they stand ; all pelted by weather, besmeared 
with grease, and blackened by the sooty rigging. 

Each man's knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened for 
dinner. As the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye, 
watches the filling of the poisoned chalice (truly but a very 
small tin mug, to be prosaic), and, tossing back his head, 
tosses the contents into himself, and passes the empty chal- 
ice and passes on, so the second man with an anticipatory 
wipe of his mouth or sleeve or handkerchief, bides his 
turn, and drinks and hands and passes on, in whom, and in 
each as his turn approaches, beams a knowingly kindled eye, 
a brighter temper, and a suddenly awakened tendency to be 
jocose with some shipmate. Nor do I even observe that the 
man in charge of the ship's lamps, who in right of his ofiice 
has a double allowance, of poisoned chalices, seems thereby 
vastly degraded, even though he empties the chalices into 
himself, one after the other, much as if he were delivering 
their contents at some absorbent establishment in which 
he had no personal interest. But vastly comforted, I note 
them all to be, on deck presently, even to the circulation 
of redder blood in their cold blue knuckles ; and when I 
look up at them lying out on the yards, and holding on for 
life among the beating sails, I cannot for my life see the 
justice of -visiting on them — or on me — the drunken 
crimes of any number of criminals arranged at the heaviest 
of assizes. 

Abetting myself in my idle humor, I closed my eyes, and 
recalled life on board of one of those mail-packets, as I lay, 
part of that day, in the Bay of New York, ! The regu- 
lar life began — mine always did, for I never got to sleep* 
afterwards — with the rigging of the pump while it was 
yet dark, and washing down of decks. Any enormous 
giant at a prodigious hydropathic establishment, conscien- 
tiously undergoing the water-cure in all its departments, 
and extremely particular about cleaning his teeth, would 
make those noises. Swash, splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, 
bubble, swash, splash, bubble, toothbrush, splash, splash, 
bubble, rub. Then the day would break, and, descending 
from my berth by a graceful ladder composed of half-opened 
drawers beneath it, I would re-open my outer dead-light and 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 549 

my inner sliding window (closed by a watchman during the 
water-cure), and would look out at the long-rolling, lead- 
colored, white-topped waves over which the dawn, on a cold 
winter morning, cast a level, lonely glance, and through 
which the ship fought her melancholy way at a terrific rate. 
And now, lying down again, awaiting the season for broiled 
ham and tea, I would be compelled to listen to the voice of 
conscience, — the screw. „ 

It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of 
stomach ; but I called it in my fancy by the higher name. 
Because it seemed to me that we were all of us, all day 
long, endeavoring to stifle the voice. Because it was un- 
der everbody's pillow, everybody's plate, everybody's camp- 
stool, everybody's book, everybody's occupation. Because 
we pretended not to hear it, especially at meal-times, even- 
ing whist, and morning conversation on deck ; but it was 
always among us in an under monotone, not to be drowned 
in pea-soup, not to be shuffled with cards, not to be diverted 
by books, not to be knitted into any pattern, not to be 
walked away from. It was smoked in the weediest cigar, 
and drunk in the strongest cocktail ; it was conveyed on 
deck at noon with limp ladies, who lay there in their wrap- 
pers until the stars shone ; it waited at r table with the stew- 
ards ; nobody could put it out with the lights. It was 
considered (as on shore) ill-bred to acknowledge the voice 
of conscience. It was not polite to mention it. One 
squally day an amiable gentleman in love gave much of- 
fence to a surrounding circle, including the object of his 
attachment, by saying of it, after it had goaded him over 
two easy-chairs and a skylight, " Screw ! " 

Sometimes it would appear subdued. In fleeting mo- 
ments, when bubbles of champagne pervaded the nose, .or 
when there was "hot pot" in the bill of fare, or when 
an old dish we had had regularly every day was described 
in that official document by a new name, — under such ex- 
citements, one would almost believe it hushed. The cere- 
mony of washing plates on deck, performed after every 
meal by a circle as of ringers of crockery triple-bob majors 
for a prize, would keep it down. Hauling the reel, taking 
the sun at noon, posting the twenty-four hours' run, alter- 
ing the ship's time by the meridian, casting the waste food 
overboard, and attracting the eager gulls that followed in 
our wake, — these events would suppress it for a while. But 



550 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

the instant any break or pause took place in any such diver- 
sion, the voice would be at it again, importuning us to the 
last extent. A newly married young pair, who walked the 
deck affectionately some twenty miles per day, would, in 
the full flush of their exercise, suddenly become stricken by 
it, and stand trembling, but otherwise immovable, under 
its reproaches. 

When this terrible monitor was most severe with us was 
when the time approached for- our retiring to our«dens for 
the night ; when the lighted candles in the saloon grew 
fewer and fewer ; when the deserted glasses with spoons 
in them grew more and more numerous ; when waifs of 
toasted cheese and strays of sardines fried in batter slid 
languidly to and fro in the table-racks ; when the man 
who always read had shut up his book, and blown out his 
candle ; when the man who always talked had ceased from 
troubling j when the man who was always medically re- 
ported as going to have delirium tremens had put it off till 
to-morrow ; when the man who every night devoted him- 
self to a midnight smoke on deck two hours in length, and 
who every night was in bed within ten minutes afterwards, 
was buttoning himself up in his third coat for his hardy vigil : 
for then, as we fell off one by one, and, entering our several 
hutches, came into a peculiar atmosphere of bilge-water and 
Windsor soap, the voice would shake us to the centre. Woe 
to us when we sat down on our sofa, watching the swinging 
candle forever trying and retrying to stand upon his head ! 
or our coat upon its peg, imitating us as we appeared in 
our gymnastic days by sustaining itself horizontally from 
the wall, in emulation of the lighter and more facile towels ! 
Then would the voice especially claim us for its prey, and 
rend us all to pieces. 

Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the 
voice grows angrier and deeper. Under the mattress and 
under the pillow, under the sofa and under the washing- 
stand, under the ship and under the sea, seeming to rise 
from the foundations under the earth with every scoop of 
the great Atlantic (and oh ! why scoop so ), always the 
voice. , Vain to deny its existence in the night season ; im- 
possible to be hard of hearing ; screw, screw, screw ! Some- 
times it lifts out of the water, and revolves with a whir, 
like a ferocious firework, — except that it never expends 
itself, but is always ready to go off again ; sometimes it 



NEW UNCOMMEECIAL SAMPLES. 551 

seems to be in anguish, and shivers ; sometimes it seems to 
be terrified by its last plunge, and has a fit which causes it 
to struggle, quiver, and for an instant stop. And now the 
ship sets in rolling, as only ships so fiercely screwed through 
time and space, day and night, fair weather and foul, can 
roll. 

Did she ever take a roll before like that last? Did 
she ever take a roll before like this worse one that is com- 
ing now?* Here is the partition at my ear down in the 
deep on the lee side. Are we ever coming up again 
together? I think not; the partition and I are so long 
about it that I really do believe we have overdone it this 
time. Heavens, what a scoop ! What a deep scoop, what 
a hollow scoop, what a long scoop ! "Will it ever end, 
and can we bear the heavy mass of water we have taken 
on board, and which has let loose all the table furniture 
in the officers' mess, and has beaten open the door of the 
little passage between the purser and me, and is swash- 
ing about, even there and even here ? The purser snores 
re-assuringly, and, the ship's bells striking, I hear the 
cheerful " All's well ! " of the watch musically given back 
the length of the deck, as the lately diving partition, now 
high in air, tries (unsoftened by what we have gone 
through together) to force me out of bed and berth. 

" All's well ! " Comforting to know, though surely all 
might be better. Put aside the rolling and the rush of 
water, and think of darting through such darkness with 
such velocity. Think of any other similar object coming in 
the opposite direction ! 

Whether there may be an attraction in two such mov- 
ing bodies out at sea, which may help accident to bring 
them into collision ? Thoughts, too, arise (the voice never 
silent all the while, but marvellously suggestive) of the 
gulf below ; of the strange unfruitful mountain ranges 
and deep valleys over which we are passing; of monstrous 
fish midway ; of the ship's suddenly altering her course 
on her own account, and with a wild plunge settling 
down, and making that voyage with a crew of dead dis- 
coverers. Now too, one recalls an almost universal ten- 
dency on the part of passengers to stumble, at- some 
time or other in the day, on the topic of a certain 
large steamer making this same run, which was lost at 
sea, and never heard of more. Everybody has seemed 



552 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

under a spell, compelling approach to the threshold of 
the grim subject, stoppage, discomfiture, and pretence of 
never having been near it. The boatswain's whistle 
sounds ! A change in the wind, hoarse orders issuing, 
and the watch very busy. Sails come crashing home 
overhead, ropes (that seem all knot) ditto; every man 
engaged appears to have twenty feet, with twenty times 
the average amount of stamping-power in each. Grad- 
ually the noise slackens, the hoarse cries die* away, the 
boatswain's whistle softens into the soothing and con- 
tented notes, which rather reluctantly admit that the 
job is done for the time, and the voice sets in again. 

Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill and down, 
and swinging and swaying, until consciousness revives of 
atmospherical Windsor soap and bilge-water, and the voice 
announces that the giant has come for the water-cure 
again. 

Such were my fanciful reminiscences as I lay, part of 
that day, in the Bay of New York, ! Also as we passed 
clear of the Narrows, and got out to sea; also in many 
an idle hour at sea in sunny weather ! At length the 
observations and computations showed that we should make 
the coast of Ireland to-night. So I stood watch on deck 
all night to-night, to see how we made the coast of Ire- 
land. 

Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly phosphorescent. 
Great way on the ship, and double lookout kept. Vigi- 
lant captain^ on the bridge, vigilant first officer looking 
over the port side, vigilant second officer' standing by the 
quartermaster at the compass, vigilant third officer posted 
at the stern rail with a lantern. No passengers on the 
quiet decks, but expectation everywhere nevertheless. 
The two men at the wheel very steady, very serious,. and 
very prompt to answer orders. An order issued sharply 
now and then, and echoed back ; otherwise the night 
drags slowly, silently, and with no change. 

All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in the morn- 
ing, a vague movement of relief from a long strain ex- 
presses itself in all hands ; the third officer's lantern 
twinkles, and he fires a rocket, and another rocket. A 
sullen solitary light is pointed out to me in the black 
sky yonder. A change is expected in the light, but 
none takes place. " Give them two more rockets, Mr. 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 553 

Vigilant." Two more, and a blue-light burnt. All eyes 
watch the light again. At last a little toy sky-rocket 
is flashed up from it; and, even as that small streak in 
the darkness dies away, we are telegraphed to Queens- 
town, Liverpool, and London, and back again under the 
ocean to America. 

Then up come the half-dozen passengers who are going 
ashore at Queenstown, and up comes the mail-agent in 
charge of the bags, and up come the men who are to 
carry the bags into the mail-tender that will come off 
for them out of the harbor. Lamps and lanterns gleam 
here and there about the decks, and impeding bulks are 
knocked away with handspikes ; and the port-side bulwark, 
barren but a moment ago, bursts into a crop of heads 
of seamen, stewards, and engineers. 

The light begins to be gained upon, begins to be 
alongside, begins to be left astern. More rockets, and, 
between us and the land, steams beautifully the Inman 
steamship City of Paris, for New York, outward bound. We 
observe with complacency that the wind is dead against 
her (it being with us), and that she rolls and pitches. 
(The sickest passenger on board is the most delighted 
by this circumstance.) Time rushes by as we rush on ; 
and now we see the light in Queenstown Harbor, and 
now the lights of the mail-tender coming out to us. 
What vagaries the mail-tender performs on the way, in 
every point" of the compass, especially in those where she 
has no business, and why she performs them, Heaven only 
knows ! At length she is seen plunging within a cable's 
length of our port broadside, and is being roared at 
through our speaking-trumpets to do this thing, and not 
to do that, and to stand by the other, as if she were 
a very demented tender indeed. "Then, we slackening 
amidst a deafening roar of steam, this much-abused ten- 
der is made fast to us by hawsers, and the men in readi- 
ness carry the bags aboard, and return for more, bend- 
ing under their burdens, and looking just like the paste- 
board figures of the miller and "his men in the thea- 
tre of our boyhood, and comporting themselves almost 
as unsteadily. All the while the unfortunate tender 
plunges high and low, and is roared at. Then the Queens- 
town passengers are put on board of her, with infinite 
plunging and roaring, and the tender gets heaved up 

47 



554 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

on the sea to that surprising extent that she looks with- 
in an ace of washing aboard of us, high and dry. Roared 
at with contumely to the last, this wretched tender is at 
length let go, with a final plunge of great ignominy, and 
falls spinning into our wake. 

The voice of conscience resumed its dominion as the 
day climbed up the sky, and kept by all of us passengers 
into port ; kept by us as we passed other lighthouses, and 
dangerous islands off the coast, where some of the officers, 
with whom I stood my watch, had gone ashore in sailing- 
ships in fogs (and of which by that token they seemed 
to have quite an affectionate remembrance), and past the 
Welsh coast, and past the Cheshire coast, and past every 
thing and everywhere lying between our ship and her 
own special dock in the Mersey. Off which, at last, at 
nine of the clock, on a fair evening early in May, we 
stopped, and the voice ceased. A very curious sensation, 
not unlike having my own ears stopped, ensued upon 
that silence ; and it was with a no less curious sensation 
that I went over the side of the good Cunard ship "Russia" 
(whom prosperity attend through all her voyages ! ) and 
surveyed the outer hull of the gracious monster that 
the voice had inhabited. So, perhaps, shall we all, in 
the spirit, one day survey the frame that held the busier 
voice from which my vagrant fancy derived this simi- 
litude. 



A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUH. 

It fell out on a day in this last autumn, that I had 
to go down from London to a place of seaside resort, on 
an hour's business, accompanied by my esteemed friend 
Bullfinch. Let the place of seaside resort be, for the 
nonce, called Namelesston. 

I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, 
pleasantly breakfasting in the open air in the garden of 
the Palais Royal or the" Tuileries, pleasantly dining in 
the "open air in the Elysian Fields, pleasantly taking 
my cigar and lemonade in the open air on the Italian 
Boulevard towards the small hours after midnight. Bull- 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 555 

finch — an excellent man of business — had summoned 
me back across the Channel, to transact this said hour's 
business at Namelesston ; and thus it fell out that Bull- 
finch and I were in a railway carriage together on our 
way to Kamelesston, each with his return ticket in his 
waistcoat-pocket. 

Says Bullfinch, "I have a proposal to make. Let 
us dine at the Temeraire." 

I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the Temeraire ? 
inasmuch as I had not been rated on the books of the 
Temeraire for many years. 

Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of recom- 
mending the Temeraire, but on the whole was rather 
sanguine about it. He " seemed to remember," Bull- 
finch said, that he had dined well there. A plain din- 
ner, but good. Certainly not like a Parisian dinner (here 
Bullfinch obviously became the prey of want of confi- 
dence), but of its kind very fair. 

I appeal to Bullfinch's intimate knowledge of my wants 
and ways to decide whether I was usually ready to be 
pleased with any dinner, or — for the matter of that — 
with any thing that was fair of its kind and really what 
it claimed to be. Bullfinch doing me the honor to re- 
spond in the affirmative, I agreed to ship myself as an 
able trencherman on board the Temeraire. 

" Now, our plan shall be this," says Bullfinch, with his 
forefinger at his nose. •' As soon as we get to Namelesston, 
we'll drive straight to the Temeraire, and order a little din- 
ner in an hour. And as we shall not have more than enough 
time in which to dispose of it comfortably, what do you say 
to giving the house the best opportunities of serving it hot 
and quickly by dining in the coffee-room ? . 

What I had to say was, Certainly. Bullfinch (who is by 
nature of a hopeful constitution) then began to babble of 
green geese. But I checked him in that Falstaffian vein, 
urging considerations of 'time and cookery. 

In due sequence of events we drove up to the Temeraire, 
and alighted. A youth in livery received us on the door- 
step. "Looks well," said Bullfinch confidentially. And 
then aloud, " Coffee-room ! " 

The youth in livery (now perceived to be mouldy) con- 
ducted us to the desired haven, and was enjoined by Bull- 
finch to send the waiter at once, as we wished to order a 



556 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

little dinner in an hour. Then Bullfinch and I waited for 
the waiter, until, the waiter continuing to wait in some un- 
known and invisible sphere of action, we rang for the waiter ; 
which ring produced the waiter, who announced himself as 
not the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and who didn't 
wait a moment longer. 

So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melo- 
diously pitching his voice into a bar where two young ladies 
were keeping the books of the Temeraire, apologetically 
explained that we wished to order a little dinner in an hour, 
and that we were debarred from the execution of our inof- 
fensive purpose by consignment to solitude. 

Hereupon. one of the young ladies rang a bell, which re- 
produced — at the bar this time — the waiter who was not 
the waiter who ought to wait upon us ; that extraordinary 
man, whose life seemed consumed in waiting upon people 
to say that he wouldn't wait upon them, repeated his former 
protest with great indignation, and retired. 

Bullfinch, with a fallen countenance, was about to say to 
me, " This won't do," when the waiter who ought to wait 
upon us left off keeping us waiting at last. " Waiter," 
said Bullfinch piteously, " we have been a long time wait- 
ing." The waiter who ought to wait upon us, laid the 
blame upon the waiter who ought not to wait upon us, and 
said it was all that waiter's fault. 

" We wish," said Bullfinch, much depressed, " to order a 
little dinner in an hour. What can we have ? " 

" What would you like to have, gentlemen ? " 

Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of speech and ac- 
tion, and with a forlorn old fly-blown bill of fare in his 
hand which the waiter had given him, and which was a 
sort of general manuscript index to any cookery-book you 
please, moved the previous question. 

We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole, curry, and roast 
cluck. Agreed. At this table by this window. Punctual- 
ly in an hour. 

I had been feigning to look out of this window ; but I 
had been taking note of the crumbs on all the tables, the 
dirty table-cloths,- the stuffy, soupy, airless atmosphere, 
the stale leavings everywhere about, the deep gloom of the 
waiter who ought to wait upon us, and the stomach-ache 
with which a lonely traveller at a distant table in a corner 
was too evidently afflicted. I now pointed out to Bullfinch 



NEW UNCOMMEECIAL SAMPLES. 557 

the alarming circumstance that this traveller had dined. 
We hurriedly debated whether, without infringement of 
good breeding, we could ask him to disclose if he had par- 
taken of mock-turtle, sole, curry, or roast duck ? We de- 
cided that the thing could not be politely done ; and we had 
set our own stomachs on a cast, and they must stand the 
hazard of the die. 

I hold phrenology, within certain limits to be true ; I am 
much of the same mind as to the subtler expressions of the 
hand; I hold phyisognomy to be infallible; though all 
these sciences demand rare qualities in the student. But 
I also hold that there is no more certain index to personal 
character than the condition of a set of casters is to the 
character of any hotel. Knowing, and having often tested 
this theory of mine, Bullfinch resigned himself to the worst, 
when, laying aside any remaining veil of disguise, I held 
up before him in succession the cloudy oil and furry vinegar, 
the clogged cayenne, the dirty salt, the obscene dregs of 
soy, andr the anchovy sauce in a flannel waistcoat of decom- 
position. 

We went out to transact our business. So inspiriting 
was the relief of passing into the clean and windy streets of 
Namelesston from the heavy and vapid closeness of the coffee- 
room of the Temeraire, that hope began to revive within us. 
We began to consider that perhaps the lonely traveller had 
taken physic, or done something injudicious to bring his com- 
plaint on. Bullfinch remarked that he thought the waiter 
who ought to wait upon us had brightened a little when sug- 
gesting curry ; and although I knew him to have been at 
that moment the express image of despair, I allowed myself 
to become elevated in spirits. As we walked by the softly 
lapping sea, all the notabililities of Namelesston, who are 
forever going up and down with the changelessness of 
the tides passed to and fro in procession. Pretty girls 
on horseback, and with detested riding-masters j pretty 
girls on foot ; mature ladies in hats, — spectacled, strong- 
minded, and glaring at the opposite or weaker sex. The 
Stock Exchange was strongly represented, Jerusalem was 
strongly represented, the bores of the prosier London clubs 
were strongly represented. Fortune-hunters of all denomi- 
nations were there, from hirsute insolvency, in a curricle, to 
closely buttoned swindlery in doubtful boots, on the sharp 
lookout for any likely young gentleman disposed to play a 

47* 



558 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

game at billiards round the corner. Masters of languages, 
their lessons finished for the day, were going to their homes 
out of sight of the sea ; mistresses of accomplishments, 
carrying small portfolios, likewise tripped homeward ; pairs 
of scholastic pupils, two and two, went languidly along the 
beach, surveying the face of the waters as if waiting for 
some Ark to come and take them off. Spectres of the 
George the Fourth days flitted unsteadily among the crowd, 
bearing the outward semblance of ancient dandies, of every 
one of whom it might be said, not that he had one leg in 
the grave, or both legs, but that he was steeped in grave to 
the summit of his high shirt-collar, and had nothing real 
about him but his bones. Alone stationary in the midst of 
all the movements, the Namelesston boatmen leaned against 
the railings and yawned, and looked out to sea, or looked 
at the moored fishing-boats and at nothing. Such is the 
unchanging manner of life with this nursery of our hardy 
seamen ; and very dry nurses they are, and always wanting 
something to drink. The only two nautical personages de- 
tached from the railing were the two fortunate possessors of 
the celebrated monstrous unknown barking-fish, just caught 
(frequently just caught off Namelesston), who carried him 
about in a hamper, and pressed the scientific to look in at 
the lid. 

The sands of the hour had all run out when we got back 
to the Temeraire. Says Bullfinch, then, to the youth in 
livery, with boldness, " Lavatory ! " 

When we arrived at the family vault with a skylight, which 
the youth in livery presented as the institution sought, we 
had already whisked off our cravats and coats ; but finding 
ourselves in the presence of an evil smell, and no linen but 
two crumpled towels newly damp from the countenances 
of two somebody elses, we put on our cravats and coats 
again, and fled unwashed to the coffee-room. 

There the waiter who ought to wait upon us had set 
forth our knives and forks and glasses, on the cloth whose 
dirty acquaintance we had already had the pleasure of 
making, and which we were pleased to recognize by the 
familiar expression of its stains. And now there occurred 
the truly surprising phenomenon, that the waiter who 
ought not to wait upon us swooped down upon us, clutched 
our loaf of bread, and vanished with the same. 

Bullfinch, with distracted eyes, was following this unac- 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 559 

countable figure " out at the portal/' like the ghost in Ham- 
let, when the waiter who ought to wait upon us jostled 
against it, carrying a tureen. 

" Waiter ! " said a severe diner, lately finished, perusing 
his bill fiercely through his eye-glass. 

The waiter put down our tureen on a remote side-table, 
and went to see what was amiss in this new direction. 

" This is not right, you know, waiter. Look here ! here's 
yesterday's sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are 
again, two shillings. And what does sixpence mean ? " 

So far from knowing what sixpence meant, the waiter 
protested that he didn't know what any thing meant. He 
wiped the perspiration from his clamnry brow, and said it 
was impossible to do it, — not particularizing what, — and 
the kitchen was so far off. 

" Take the bill to the bar, and get it altered," said Mr. 
Indignation Cocker, so to call him. 

The waiter took it, looked intensely at it, didn't seem to 
like the idea of taking it to the bar, and submitted, as a 
new light upon the case, that perhaps sixpence meant six 
pence. 

" I tell you again," said Mr. Indignation Cocker, " here's 
yesterday's sherry — can't you see it ? — one and eightpence, 
and here we are again, two shillings. What do you make 
of one and eightpence and two shillings ? " 

Totally unable to make any thing of one and eightpence 
and two shillings, the waiter went out 'to try if anybody 
else could ; merely casting a helpless backward glance at 
Bullfinch, in acknowledgment of his pathetic entreaties 
for our soup-tureen. After a pause, during which Mr. In- 
dignation Cocker read a newspaper and coughed defiant 
coughs, Bullfinch arose to get the tureen, when the waiter 
re-appeared and brought it, — dropping Mr. Indignation 
Cocker's altered bill on Mr. Indignation Cocker's table as 
he came along. 

" It's quite impossible to do it, gentlemen," murmured 
the waiter ; " and the kitchen is so far off." 

"Well, you don't keep the house 5 it's not your fault, 
we suppose. Bring some sherry." 

" Waiter ! " from Mr. Indignation Cocker, with a new 
and burning sense of injury upon him. 

The waiter, arrested on his way to our sherry, stopped 
short, and came back to see what was wrong now. 



560 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

" Will ydii look here ? This is worse than before. Do 
you understand ? Here's yesterday's sherry, one and eight- 
pence, and here we are again two shillings. And what the 
devil does ninepence mean ? " 

This new portent utterly confounded the waiter. He 
wrung his napkin, and mutely appealed to the ceiling. 

" Waiter, fetch that sherry, " says Bullfinch, in open wrath 
and revolt. 

" I want to know," persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, 
" the meaning of ninepence. I want to know the meaning 
of sherry one and eightpence yesterday, and of here we are 
again two shillings. Send somebody. " 

The distracted waiter got out of the room on pretext of 
sending somebody, and by that means got our wine. But 
the instant he appeared with our decanter, Mr. Indignation 
Cocker descended on him again. 

" Waiter ! " 

" You will now have the goodness to attend to our dinner, 
waiter," says Bullfinch sternly. 

" I am very sorry, but it's quite impossible to do it, gen- 
tlemen," pleaded the waiter ; "and the kitchen " — 

" Waiter ! " said Mr. Indignation Coker. " Is," resumed 
the waiter, " so far oif, that " — 

" Waiter ! " persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, " send 
somebody." 

We were not without our fears that the waiter rushed out 
to hang himself; and we were much relieved by his fetching 
somebody, — in graceful, flowing skirts and with a waist, : — 
who very soon settled Mr. Indignation Cocker's business. 

" Oh ! " said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surprisingly 
quenched by this apparition ; " I wished to ask about this 
bill of mine, because it appears to me that there's a little 
mistake here. Let me show you. Here's yesterday's sherry 
one and eightpence, and here we are again two shillings. 
And how do you explain ninepence ? " 

However it was explained, in tones too soft to be over- 
heard. Mr. Cocker was heard to say nothing more than 
" Ah-h-h- ! Indeed ; thank you ! Yes," and shortly after- 
wards went out, a milder man. 

The lonely traveller with the stomach-ache had all this 
time suffered severety, drawing up a leg now and then, and 
sipping hot brandy and water with grated ginger in it. 
When we tasted our (very) mock-turtle soup, and were in- 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 561 

stantly seized with symptoms of some disorder simulating 
apoplexy, and occasioned by the surcharge of nose and brain 
with lukewarm dish-water holding in solution sour flour, 
poisonous condiments, and (say) seventj^-five per cent of 
miscellaneous kitchen stuff rolled into balls, we were inclined 
to trace his disorder to that source. On the other hand, 
there was a silent anguish upon him too strongly resem- 
bling the results established within ourselves by the sherry, 
to be discarded from alarmed consideration. Again, we 
observed him, with terror, to be much overcome by our 
sole's being aired in a temporary retreat close to him, while 
the waiter went out (as we conceived) to see his friends. 
And when the curry made its appearance he suddenly re- 
tired in great disorder. 

In fine, for the uneatable part of this little dinner (as 
contradistinguished from the undrinkable) we paid only 
seven shillings and sixpence each. And Bullfinch and I 
agreed^ unanimously, that no such ill-served, ill-appointed, 
ill-cooked, nasty little dinner could be got for the money 
anywhere else under the sun. With that comfort to our 
backs, we turned them on the dear old Temeraire, the char- 
ging Temeraire, and resolved (in the Scotch dialect) to gang 
nae inair to the flabby Temeraire. 



MR. BARLOW. 

A great reader of good fiction at an unusually early age, 
it seems to me as though I had been born under the super- 
intendence of the estimable but terrific gentleman whose 
name stands at the head of my present reflections. The 
instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow, will be remembered 
as the tutor of Master Harry Sanford and Master Tommy 
Merton. He knew every thing, and didactically improved 
all sorts of occasions, from the consumption of a plate of 
cherries to the contemplation of a starlight night. What 
youth came to without Mr. Barlow was displaj T ed in the 
history of Sanford and Merton, by the example of a certain 
awful Master Mash. This young wretch wore buckles and 
powder, conducted himself with insupportable levity at the 



562 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

theatre, had no idea of facing a mad bull single-handed (in 
which I think him less reprehensible, as remotely reflecting 
my own character), and was a frightful instance of the en- 
ervating effects of luxury upon the human race. 

Strange destiny on the part of Mr. Barlow, to go down 
to posterity as childhood's experience of a Bore ! Immor- 
tal Mr. Barlow, boring his way through the verdant fresh- 
ness of ages ! 

My personal indictment against Mr. Barlow is one of 
many counts. I will proceed to set forth a few of the inju- 
ries he has done me. 

In the first place, he never made or took a joke. This 
insensibility on Mr. Barlow's part not only cast its own 
gloom over my boyhood, but blighted even the sixpenny 
jest-books of the time ; for, groaning under a moral spell 
constraining me to refer all things to Mr. Barlow, I could 
not choose but ask myself in a whisper when tickled by a 
printed jest, " What would he think of it ? What would he 
see in it?" The point of the jest immediately became a 
sting, and stung my conscience. For my mind's eye saw 
him stolid, frigid, perchance taking from its shelf some 
dreary Greek book, and translating at full length what some 
dismal sage said (and touched up afterwards, perhaps, for 
publication), when he banished some unlucky joker from 
Athens. 

The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all other portions 
of my young life but himself, the adamantine inadaptabili- 
ty of the man to my favorite fancies and amusements, is the 
thing for which I hate him most What right had he to 
bore his way into my Arabian Nights ? Yet he did. He 
was always hinting doubts of the veracity of Sindbad the 
Sailor. If he could have got hold of the Wonderful Lamp, 
I knew he would have trimmed it and lighted it, and deliv- 
ered a lecture over it on the qualities of sperm-oil, with a 
glance at the whale fisheries. He would so soon have found 
out — on mechanical principles — the peg in the neck of 
the Enchanted Horse, and would have turned it the right 
way in so workmanlike a manner, that, the horse could never 
have got any height into the air, and the story couldn't 
have been. He would have proved, by map and compass, 
that there was no such kingdom as the delightful kingdom 
of Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary. He would have 
caused that hypocritical young prig Harry to make an ex- 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 563 

periment, — with the aid of a temporary building in the 
garden and a dummy, — demonstrating that you couldn't 
let a choked hunchback down an Eastern chimney with a 
cord, and leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the 
sultan's purveyor. 

The golden sounds of the overture to the first metropoli- 
tan pantomime, I remember, were alloyed by Mr. Barlow. 
Click click, ting ting, bang bang, weedle weedle weedle, 
bang ! I recall the chilling air that ran across my frame 
and cooled my hot delight, as the thought occurred to me, 
" This would never do for Mr. Barlow ! " After the curtain 
drew up, dreadful doubts of Mr. Barlow's considering the 
costumes of the Nymphs of the Nebula as being sufficiently 
opaque, obtruded themselves on my enjoyment. In the 
clown I perceived two persons; one a fascinating unac- 
countable creature of a hectic complexion, joyous in spirits 
though feeble in intellect, with flashes of brilliancy ; the 
other a pupil for Mr. Barlow. I thought how Mr. Barlow 
would* secretly rise early in the morning, and butter the 
pavement for him, and, when he had brought him down, 
would look severely out of his study window and ask him 
how he enjoyed the fun. 

I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the pokers in 
the house, and singe him with the whole collection, to bring 
him better acquainted with the properties of incandescent 
iron, on which he (Barlow) would fully expatiate. I pic- 
tured Mr. Barlow's instituting a comparison between* the 
clown's conduct at his studies, — drinking up the ink, lick- 
ing his copy-book, and using his head for blotting-paper, — 
and that of the already mentioned young prig of prigs, 
Harry, sitting at the Barlovian feet, sneakingly pretending 
to be in a rapture of youthful knowledge. I thought how 
soon Mr. Barlow would smooth the clown's hair down, in- 
stead of letting it stand erect in three tall tufts ; and how, 
after a couple of years or so with Mr. Barlow, he would 
keep his legs close together when he walked, and would 
take his hands out of his big loose pockets, and wouldn't 
have a jump left in him. 

That I am particularly ignorant what most things in the 
universe are made of, and how they are made, is another of 
my charges against Mr. Barlow. With the dread upon me 
of developing into a Harry, and with the further dread upon 
me of being Barlowed if I made inquiries, by bringing 



564 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

down upon myself a cold shower-bath of explanations and 
experiments, I forebore enlightenment in my youth, and be- 
came, as they say in melodramas, " the wreck you now be- 
hold." That I consorted with idlers and dunces is another 
of the melancholy facts for which I hold Mr. Barlow re- 
sponsible. That pragmatical prig, Harry, became so de- 
testable in my sight, that, he being reported studious in the 
South, I would have tied idle to the extremest North. Bet- 
ter to learn misconduct from a Master Mash than science 
and statistics from a Sandford ! So I took the path, which, 
but for Mr. Barlow, I might never have trodden. Thought 
I, with a shudder, " Mr. Barlow is a bore, with an immense 
constructive power of making bores. His prize specimen is 
a bore. He seeks to make a bore of me. That knowledge 
is power I am not prepared to gainsay ; but, with Mr. Bar- 
low, knowledge is power to bore." Therefore I took 
refuge in the caves of ignorance, wherein I have resided 
ever since, and which are still my private address. 

But the weightiest charge of all my charges against Mr. 
Barlow is, that he still walks the earth in various disguises, 
seeking to make a Tommy of me, even in my maturity. Ir- 
repressible, instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow fills my life 
with pitfalls, and lies hiding at the bottom to burst out 
upon me when I least expect him. 

A few of these dismal experiences of mine shall suffice. 

Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested largely in the 
moving panorama trade, and having on various occasions 
identified him in the dark with a long wand in his hand, 
holding forth in his old way (made more appalling in this 
connection by his sometimes cracking a piece of Mr. Car- 
lyle's own Dead-sea fruit in mistake for a joke), I systemati- 
cally shun pictorial entertainment on rollers. Similarly, 
I should demand responsible bail and guaranty against the 
appearance of Mr. Barlow, before committing myself to at- 
tendance at any assemblage of my fellow-creatures where a 
bottle of water and a note-book were conspicuous objects ; 
for in either of those associations, I should expressly except 
him. But such is the designing nature of the man, that he 
steals in where no reasoning precaution or prevision could 
except him. As in the following case : — 

Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a country town. 
In this country town the Mississippi Momuses, nine in 
number, were announced to appear in the town hall, for 



NEW- UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 565 

the general delectation, this last Christmas week. Know- 
ing Mr. Barlow to be unconnected with the Mississippi, 
though holding republican opinions, and deeming myself 
secure, I took a stall. My object was to hear and see the 
Mississippi Momuses in what the bills described as their 
" National ballads, plantation break-downs, nigger part- 
songs, choice conundrums, sparkling repartees, &c." I 
found the nine dressed alike, in the black coat and trousers, 
white waistcoat, very large shirt-front, very large shirt- 
collar, and very large white tie and wristbands, which con- 
stitute the dress of the mass of the African race, and which 
has been observed by travellers to prevail over a vast num- 
ber of degrees of latitude. All the nine rolled their eyes 
exceedingly, and had very red lips. At the extremities of 
the curve they formed, seated in their chairs, were the per- 
formers on the tambourine and bones. The centre Momus, 
a black of melancholy aspect (who inspired me with a vague 
uneasiness for which I could not then account), performed 
on tt Mississippi instrument closely resembling what was 
once called in this island a hurdy-gurdy. The Momuses 
on either side of him had each another instrument peculiar 
to the Father of Waters, which may be likened to a stringed 
weather-glass held upside down. There were likewise a 
little flute and a violin. All went well for a while, and we 
had had several sparkling repartees exchanged between the 
performers on the tambourine and bones, when the black of 
melancholy aspect, turning to the latter, and addressing 
him in a deep and improving voice as "Bones, sir," delivered, 
certain grave remarks to him concerning the juveniles pres- 
ent, and the season of the year ; whereon I perceived that 
I was in the presence of Mr. Barlow, — corked ! 

Another night — and this was in London — I attended 
the representation of a little comedy. As the characters 
were life-like (and consequently not improving), and as 
they went upon their several ways and designs without per- 
sonally addressing themselves to me, I felt rather confident 
of coming through it without being regarded as Tommy, 
the more so, as we were clearly getting close to the end. 
But I deceived myself. All of a sudden, and apropos of 
nothing, everybody concerned came to a "check and halt, 
advanced to the footlights in a general rally to take dead 
aim at me, and brought me down with a moral homily, in 
which I detected the dread hand of Barlow. 



566 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils of this hunter, 
that on the very next night after that, I was again en- 
trapped, where no vestige of a spring could have been 
apprehended by the timidest. It was a burlesque that I 
saw performed ; an uncompromising burlesque, where every- 
body concerned, but especially the ladies, carried on at a 
very considerable rate indeed. Most prominent and active 
among the corps of performers was what I took to be (and 
she really gave me very fair opportunities of coming to a 
right conclusion) a young lady of a pretty figure. She was 
dressed as a picturesque young gentleman, whose panta- 
loons had been cut off in their infancy ; and she had very 
neat knees and very neat satin boots. Immediately after 
singing a slang song and dancing a slang dance, this enga- 
ging figure approached the fatal lamps, and, bending over 
them, delivered in a thrilling voice a random eulogium on, 
and exhortation to pursue, the virtues. " Great Heaven ! " 
was my exclamation ; " Barlow ! " 

There is still another aspect in which Mr. Barlow per- 
petually insists on my sustaining the character of Tommy, 
which is more unendurable yet, on account of it's extreme 
aggressiveness. For the purposes of a review or newspaper, 
he will get up an abstruse subject with infinite pains, will 
Barlow, utterly regardless of the price of midnight oil, and 
indeed of every thing else, save cramming himself to the eyes. 
But mark. When Mr. Barlow blows his information 
off, he is not contented with having rammed it home, 
and discharged it upon me, Tommy, his target, but he pre- 
tends that he was always in possession of it, and made 
nothing of it, — that he imbibed it with mother's milk, — 
and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behind- 
hand in not having done the same. I ask, why is Tommy 
to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent ? What 
Mr. Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself, a week 
ago, it surely cannot be any very heavy backsliding in me 
not to have at my fingers' ends to-day ! And yet Mr. Bar- 
low systematically carries it over me with a high hand, and 
will tauntingly ask me, in his articles, whether it is possible 
that I am not aware that every school-boy knows that the 
fourteenth turning on the left in the steppes of Ivussia will 
conduct to such-and-such a wandering tribe? with other 
disparaging questions of like nature. So, when Mr. Barlow 
addresses a letter to any journal as a volunteer correspond- 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 567 

ent (which I frequently find him doing), he will previously 
have gotten somebody to tell him some tremendous techni- 
cality, and will write in the coolest manner, "Now, sir, I 
may assume that every reader of your columns, possessing 
average information and intelligence, knows as well as I do 
that " — say that the draught from the touch-hole of a can- 
non of such a calibre bears such a proportion in the nicest 
fractions to the draught from the muzzle ; or some equally 
familiar little fact. But whatever it is, be certain that it 
always tends to the exaltation of Mr. Barlow, and the 
depression of his enforced and enslaved pupil. 

Mr. Barlow's' knowledge of my own pursuits I find to be 
so profound, that my own knowledge of them becomes as 
nothing. Mr. Barlow (disguised and bearing a feigned 
name but detected by me) has occasionally taught me, in a 
sonorous voice, from end to end of a long dinner-table, trifles 
that I took the liberty of teaching him five and twenty 
years ago. My closing article of impeachment against Mr. 
Baiiow is, that he goes out to breakfast, goes out to dinner, 
goes out everywhere, high and low, and that he will 
preach to me, and that I can't get rid of him. He makes 
of me a Promethean Tommy, bound ; and he is the vulture 
that gorges itself upon the liver of my uninstructed mind. 



ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 

It is one of my fancies, that even my idlest walk must 
always have its appointed destination. I set myself a task 
before I leave my lodging in Covent Garden on a street 
expedition, and should no more think of altering my route 
by the way, or turning back and leaving a part of it una- 
chieved, than I should think of fraudulently violating an 
agreement entered into with somebody else. The other 
day, finding myself under this kind of obligation to proceed 
to Lime House, I started punctually at noon, in compliance 
with the terms of the contract with myself to which my 
good faith was pledged. 

On such an occasion, it is my habit to regard my walk 
as my beat, and myself as a higher sort of police constable 



568 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

doing duty on the same. There is many a ruffian in the 
streets whom I mentally collar and clear out of them, who 
would see mighty little of London, I can tell him, if I could 
deal with him physically. 

Issuing forth upon this very heat, and following with my 
eyes three hulking garrotters on their way home, — which 
home I could confidently swear to he within so many yards 
of Drury Lane, in such a narrowed and restricted direction 
(though they live in their lodging quite as undisturbed as I 
in mine), — I went on duty with a consideration which I 
respectfully offer to the new chief commissioner, — in 
whom I thoroughly confide as a tried and efficient public 
servant. How often (thought I) have I been forced to 
swallow, in police-reports, the intolerable stereotyped pill 
of nonsense, how that the police constable informed the 
worthy magistrate how that the associates of the prisoner 
did, at that present speaking, dwell in a street or court 
which no man dared go down, and how that the worthy 
magistrate had heard of the dark reputation of such street 
or court, and how that our readers would doubtless remem- 
ber that it was always the same street or court which was 
thus edifyingly discoursed about, say once a fortnight. 

Now, suppose that a chief commissioner sent round a 
circular to every division of police employed in London, 
requiring instantly the names in all districts of all such 
much-puffed streets or courts which no man durst go down ; 
and suppose that in such circular he gave plain warning, 
" If those places really exist, they are a proof of police in- 
efficiency which I mean to punish ; and if they do not exist, 
but are a conventional fiction, then they are a proof of lazy 
tacit police connivance with professional crime, which I 
also mean to punish " — what then ? Fictions or realities, 
could they survive the touchstone of this atom of common 
sense ? To tell us in open court, until it has become as 
trite a feature of news as the great gooseberry, that a costly 
police-system such as was never before heard of, has left in 
London, in the days of steam and gas and photographs of 
thieves and electric telegraphs, the sanctuaries and stews 
of the Stuarts ! Why, a parity of practice, in all depart- 
ments, would bring back the Plague in two summers, and 
the Druids in a century ! 

Walking faster under my share of this public injury, I 
overturned a wretched little creature, who, clutching at the 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 569 

rags of a pair of trousers with one of its claws, and at its 
ragged hair with the other, pattered with bare feet over 
the muddy stones. I stopped to' raise and succor this poor 
weeping wretch, and fifty like it, but of both sexes, were 
about me in a moment, begging, tumbling, fighting, clam- 
oring, yelling, shivering in their nakedness and hunger. 
The piece of money I had put into the claw of the child I 
had overturned was clawed out of it, and was again clawed 
out of that wolfish gripe, and again out of that, and soon 
I had no notion in what part of the obscene scuffle in the 
mud, of rags and legs and arms and dirt, the money might 
be. In raising the child, I had drawn it aside out of the 
main thoroughfare, and this took place among some wood- 
en hoardings and barriers and ruins of demolished build- 
ings, hard by Temple Bar. 

Unexpectedly, from among them emerged a genuine po- 
lice constable, before whom the dreadful brood dispersed 
in various directions, he making feints and darts in this 
direction and in that, and catching nothing. When all 
were frightened away, he took off his hat, pulled out a 
handkerchief from it, wiped his heated brow, and restored 
the handkerchief and hat to their places, with the air of a 
man who had discharged a great moral duty, — as indeed 
he had, in doing what was set down for him. I looked at 
him, and I looked about at the disorderly traces in the 
mud, and I thought of the drops of rai-n and the footprints 
of an extinct creature, hoary ages upon ages old, that geol- 
ogists have identified on the face of a clift ; and this spec- 
ulation came over me : If this mud could petrify at this 
moment, and could lie concealed here for ten thousand 
years, I wonder whether the race of men then to be our 
successors on the earth could, from these or any marks, by 
the utmost force of the human intellect, unassisted by tra- 
dition, deduce such an astounding inference as the exist- 
ence of a polished state of society that bore with the public 
savagery of neglected children in the streets of its capital 
city, and was proud of its power by sea and land, and never 
used its power to seize and save them ! 

After this, when I came to the Old Bailey and glanced 
up it towards Newgate, I found that the prison had an in- 
consistent look. There seemed to be some unlucky in- 
consistency in the atmosphere that day ; for though the 
proportions of St. Paul's Cathedral are very beautiful, it 

48* 



570 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

had an air of being somewhat out of drawing, in my eyes. 
I felt as though the cross were too high up, and perched 
upon the intervening golden ball too far away. 

Facing eastward, I left behind me Smithfield and Old 
Bailey, — fire and fagot, condemned hold, public hanging, 
whipping through the city at the cart-tail, pillory, brand- 
ing-iron, and other beautiful ancestral landmarks, which 
rude hands have rooted up, without bringing the stars quite 
down upon us as yet, — and went my way upon my beat, 
noting how oddly characteristic neighborhoods are divided 
from one another, hereabout, as though -by an invisible line 
across the way. Here shall cease the bankers and the 
money-changers ; here shall begin the shipping-interest 
and the nautical-instrument shops ; here shall follow a 
scarcely perceptible flavoring of groceries and drugs ; here 
shall come a strong infusion of butchers: now, small ho- 
siers shall be in the ascendent; henceforth, every thing 
exposed for sale shall have its ticketed price attached. All 
this as if specially ordered and appointed. 

A single stride- at Houndsditch Church, no wider than 
sufficed to cross the kennel at the bottom of the Canon- 
gate, which the debtors in Holyrood sanctuary were wont 
to relieve their minds by skipping over, as Scott relates, 
and standing in delightful daring of catchpoles on the free 
side, — a single stride, and every thing is entirely changed 
in grain and character. Wesfc of the stride, a table, or a 
chest of drawers on sale, shall be of mahogany and French- 
polished ; east of the stride, it shall be of deal, smeared 
with a cheap counterfeit resembling lip-salve. West of the 
stride, a penny loaf or bun shall be compact and self-con- 
tained ; east of the stride, it shall be of a sprawling and 
splay-footed character, as seeking to make more of itself 
for the money. My beat lying round by Whitechapel 
Church, and the adjacent sugar-refineries, — great build- 
ings, tier upon tier, that have the appearance of being 
nearly related to the dock-warehouses at Liverpool, — I 
turned oif to my right, and, passing round the awkward 
corner on my left, came suddenly on an apparition familiar 
to London streets afar off. 

What London peripatetic of these times has not seen the 
woman who has fallen forward, double, through some affec- 
tion of the spine, and whose head has of late taken a turn 
to one side, so that it now -droops over the back of one of 



NEW UNCOMMEECIAL SAMPLES. 571 

her arms at about the wrist ? Who does not know her 
staff, and her shawl, and her basket, as she gropes her way 
along, capable of seeing nothing but the pavement, never 
begging, never stopping, forever going somewhere on no 
business? How does she live, whence does she come, 
whither does she go, and why ? I mind the time when her 
yellow arms were naught but bone and parchment. Slight 
changes steal over her; for there is a shadowy suggestion 
of human skin on them now. The Strand may be taken 
as the central point about which she revolves in a half-mile 
orbit. How comes she so far east as this ? And coming 
back too ! Having been how much farther ? She is a rare 
spectacle in this neighborhood. I receive intelligent in- 
formation to this effect from a dog, — a lop-sided mongrel 
with a foolish tail, plodding along with his tail up, and his 
ears pricked, and displaying an amiable interest in the 
ways of his fellow-men, — if I may be allowed the expres- 
sion. After pausing at a pork-shop, he is jogging eastward 
like myself, with a benevolent countenance and a watery 
mouth, as though musing on the many excellences of pork, 
when he beholds this doubted-up bundle approaching. He 
is not so much astonished at the bundle (though amazed 
by that), as at the circumstance that it has within itself 
the means of locomotion. He stops, pricks his ears higher, 
makes a slight point, stares, utters a short, low growl, and 
glistens at the nose, — as I conceive with terror. The 
bundle continuing to approach, he barks, turns tail, and is 
about to fly, when, arguing with himself that flight is not 
becoming in a dog, he turns, and once more faces the ad- 
vancing heap of clothes. After much hesitation, it occurs 
to him that there may be a face in it somewhere. Desper- 
ately resolving to undertake the adventure, and pursue the 
inquiry, he goes slowly up to the bundle, goes slowly round 
it, and coming at length upon the human countenance 
down there where never human countenance should be, 
gives a yelp of horror, and flies for the East-India docks. 

Being now in the commercial road district of my beat, 
and bethinking myself that Stepney station is near, I 
quicken my pace that I may turn out of the road at that 
point, and see how my small eastern star is shining. 

The Children's Hospital, to which I gave that name, is 
in full force. All its beds occupied. There is a new face 
on the bed where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet little 



572 NEW UNCOMMEECIAL SAMPLES. 

child is now at rest forever. Much kind sympathy has 
heen here since my former visit, and it is good to see the 
walls profusely garnished with xlolls. I wonder what 
Poodles may think of them, as they stretch out their arms 
above the beds, and stare, and display their splendid 
dresses. Poodles has a greater interest in the patients. I 
find him making the round of the beds, like a house-sur- 
geon, attended by another dog, — a friend, — who appears 
to trot about with him in the character of his pupil dresser. 
Poodles is anxious to make me known to a pretty little girl, 
looking wonderfully healthy, who had had a leg taken ofT 
for cancer of the knee. A difficult operation, Poodles inti- 
mates, wagging his tail on the counterpane, but perfectly 
successful, as you see, dear sir ! The patient, patting 
Poodles, adds with a smile, " The leg was so much trouble 
to me, that I am glad it's gone." I never saw any thing in 
doggery finer than the deportment of Poodles, when an- 
other little girl opens her mouth to show a peculiar en- 
largement of the tongue. Poodles (at that time on a table, 
to be on a level with the occasion) looks at the tongue 
(with his own sympathetically out) so very gravely and 
knowingly, that I feel inclined to put my hand in my 
waistcoat-pocket, and give him a guinea, wrapped in paper. 

On my beat again, and close to Lime-house Church, its 
termination, I found myself near to certain " Lead-Mills." 
Struck by the name, which was fresh in my memory, and 
finding, on inquiry, that these same lead-mill^ were iden- 
tified with those same lead-mills of which I made men- 
tion when I first visited the East London Children's Hos- 
pital and its neighborhood, as Uncommercial Traveller, I 
resolved to have a look at them. 

Received by two very intelligent gentlemen, brothers, 
and partners with their father in the concern, and who tes- 
tified every desire to show their works to me freely, I 
went over the lead-mills. The purport of such works is 
the conversion of pig lead into white lead. This con- 
version is brought about by the slow and gradual effecting 
of certain successive chemical changes in the lead itself 
The processes are picturesque and interesting, — the most 
so, being the burying of the lead, at a certain stage of pre- 
paration, in pots, each pot containing a certain quantity of 
acid besides, and all the pots being buried in vast numbers, 
in layers, under tan, for some ten weeks. 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 573 

Hopping up ladders, and across planks, and on elevated 
perches, until I was uncertain whether to liken myself to a 
bird or a bricklayer, I became conscious, of standing on 
nothing particular, looking down into one of a series of 
large cocklofts, with the outer day peeping in through the 
chinks in the tiled roof above. A number of women were 
ascending to, and descending from, this cockloft, each car- 
rying on the upward journey a pot of p] sd lead and 
acid, for deposition under the smoking tan. When one 
layer of pots was completely filled, it was carefully covered 
in with planks, and those were carefully covered 
again, and then another layer of pots was begun aKvo ; 
sufficient means of ventilation being preserved through 
wooden tubes. Going down into the cockloft then till. 
I found the heat of the tan to be surprisingly great, and 
also the odor of the lead and acid to- be not absolute]} 
quisite, though I believe not noxious a b stag< 
other cocklofts, where the pots were being exhumed, the 
heat of the steaming tan was much greater, and the smell 
was penetrating and peculiar. There were cocklofts 
stages ; full and empty, half filled and half emptier 
active women were clambering about them busily ; and the 
whole thing had rather the air of the upper part of the 
house of some immensely rich old Turk, whose faithful se- 
raglio were hiding his money because the sultan or the 
pasha was coming. 

As is the "case with most pulps or pigments, so in the in- 
stance of this white lead, processes of stirring, separating, 
washing, grinding, rolling, and pressing succeed. Some of 
these are unquestionably inimical to health, the danger 
arising from inhalation of particles of lead, or from contact 
between the lead and the touch, or both. Against these 
dangers, I found good respirators provided (simply made 
of flannel and muslin, so as to be inexpensively renewed, 
and in some instances washed with scented soap), and 
gauntlet gloves, and loose gowns. Everywhere, there was 
as much fresh air as windows, well-placed and opened, could 
possibly admit. And it was explained that the precaution 
of frequently changing the women employed in the worst 
parts of the work (a precaution originating in their own ex- 
perience or apprehension of its ill effects) was found salu- 
tary. They had a mysterious and singular appearance, 
with the mouth and nose covered, and the loose gown on, 



674 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

and yet bore out the simile of the old Turk and the seraglio 
all the better for the disguise. 

At last this vexed white lead having been buried and re- 
suscitated, and heated and cooled and stirred, and sepa- 
rated and washed and ground, and rolled and pressed, is 
subjected to the action of intense fiery heat. A row of wo- 
men, dressed as above described, stood, let us say, in a large 
stone bake-house, passing on the baking-dishes as they 
were given out by the cooks, from hand to hand, into the 
ovens. The oven, or stove, cold as yet, looked as high as an 
ordinary house, and was full of men and women on tempo- 
rary ' , briskly passing up and stowing away the 
dishes. door of another oven, or stove, about to be 
ptied, was opened from above, for the uncom- 
mercial countenance to peer down into. The uncommer- 
cial countenance withdrew itself, with expedition and a 
seDse of suffocation from the dull-glowing heat and the 
overpowering smell. On the whole, perhaps the going into 
these stoves to work, when they are freshly opened, may be 
the worst part of the occupation. 

But I bit out to be indubitable that the owners of 
these lead-mills honestly and sedulously try to reduce the 
dangers of the occupation to the lowest point. 

A washing-place is provided for the women (I thought 
there might have been more towels), and a room in which 
they hang their clothes, and take their meals, and where 
they have a good fire-range and fire, and a female attend- 
ant to help them, and to watch that they do not neglect 
the cleansing of their hands before touching their food. An 
experienced medical attendant is provided for them, and 
any premonitory symptons of lead-poisoning are carefully 
treated. Their teapots and such things were set out on 
tables ready for their afternoon meal, when I saw their 
room ; and it had a homely look. It is found that they bear 
the work much better than men : some few of them have 
been at it for years, and the great majority of those I ob- 
served were strong and active. On the other hand, it 
should be remembered that most of them are very capri- 
cious and irregular in their attendance. 

American inventiveness would seem to indicate that be- 
fore very long white lead may be made entirely by ma- 
chinery. The sooner, the better. In the mean time, I 
parted from my two frank conductors over the mills, by 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 575 

telling them that they had nothing there to be concealed, 
and nothing to be blamed for. As to the rest, the phi- 
losophy of the matter of lead-poisoning and work-people 
seems to me to have been pretty fairly summed up by 
the Irish woman whom I quoted in my former paper : 
" Some of them gits.lead-pisoned soon, and some of them 
gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many, niver; 
and 'tis all according to the constitooshun, sur; and some 
constitooshuns is strong and some is weak." 

Retracing my footsteps over my beat, I went off duty. 



A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE. 

Once upon a time (no matter when), I was engaged in 
a pursuit (no matter what), which could be transacted by 
myself alone ; in which I could have no help ; which im- 
posed a constant strain on the attention, memory, obser- 
vation, and physical powers ; and which involved an almost 
fabulous amount of change of place and rapid railway trav- 
elling. I had followed this pursuit through an exception- 
ally trying winter in an always trying climate, and had re- 
sumed it in England after but a brief repose. Thus it 
came to be prolonged until, at length — and, as it seemed, 
all of a sudden — it so wore me out that I could not rely, 
with my usual cheerful confidence, upon myself to achieve 
the constantly recurring task, and began to feel (for the 
first time in my life) giddy, jarred, shaken, faint, uncer- 
tain of voice and sight and tread and touch, and dull of 
spirit. The medical advice I sought within a few hours 
was given in two words, "Instant rest." Being accus-' 
tomed to observe myself as curiously as if I were another 
man, and knowing the advice to meet my only need, I in- 
stantly halted in the pursuit of which I speak, and rested. 

My intention was to interpose, as it were, a fly-leaf in 
the book of my life, in which nothing should be written 
from without for a brief season of a few weeks. But some 
very singular experiences recorded themselves on this same 
fly-leaf, and I am going to relate them literally. I repeat 
the word, literally. 



576 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

My first odd experience was of the remarkable coinci- 
dence between my case, in the general mind, and one Mr. 
Merdle's, as I find it recorded in a work of fiction called 
Little Dorrit. To be sure, Mr. Merdle was a swindler, 
forger, and thief, and my calling had been of a less harm- 
ful (and less remunerative) nature ; but it was all one for 
that. 

Here is Mr. Merdle's case : — 

" At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were 
known, and of several brand-new maladies invented with 
the speed of light to meet the demand of the occasion. He 
had concealed a dropsy from infancy, he had inherited a 
large estate of water on the chest from his grandfather, he 
had had an operation performed on him every morning of 
his life for eighteen years, he had been subject to the ex- 
plosion of important veins in his body after the manner of 
fireworks, he had had something the matter with his lungs, 
he had had something the matter with his heart, he had 
had something the matter with his brain. Five hundred 
people who sat down to breakfast entirely uninformed on 
the whole subject, believed, before they had done breakfast, 
that they privately and personally knew Physician to have 
said to Mr. Merdle, ; You must expect to go out, some day, 
like the snuff of a candle ; ' and that they knew Mr. Mer- 
dle to have said to Physician, i A man can die but once/ 
By about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, something the 
matter with the brain became the favorite theory against 
the field ; and by twelve the something had been distinct- 
ly ascertained to be i pressure.' 

" Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, 
and seemed to make every one so comfortable, that it might 
have lasted all day but for Bar's having taken the real 
state of the case into court at half-past nine. Pressure, 
however, so far from being overthrown by the discovery, 
became a greater favorite than ever. There was a general 
moralizing upon pressure, in every street. All the. people 
who had tried to make "money, and had not been able to do 
it, said, There you were ! You no sooner began to devote 
yourself to the pursuit of wealth, than you got pressure. 
The idle people improved the occasion in a similar man- 
ner. See, said they, what you brought yourself to 
by work, work, work! You persisted in working, you 
overdid it, pressure came on, and you were done for! 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 577 

This consideration was very potent in many quarters, but 
nowhere more so than among the young clerks and part- 
ners who' had never been in the slightest danger of over- 
doing it. These, one and all, declared, quite piously, that 
they hoped they would never forget the warning as long 
as they lived, and that their conduct might be so regulated 
as to keep off pressure, and preserve them, a comfort to 
their friends, for many years." 

Just my case, — if I had only known it, — when I was 
quietly basking in the sunshine in my Kentish meadow ! 

But while I so rested, thankfully recovering every hour, 
I had experiences more odd than this. I had experiences 
of spiritual conceit ; for which, as giving me a new warning 
against that curse of mankind, I shall always feel grateful 
to the supposition that I was too far gone to protest against 
playing sick lion to any stray donkey with an itching hoof. 
All sorts of people seemed to become vicariously religious at 
my expense. I received the most uncompromising warn- 
ing-that I was a heathen ; on the conclusive authority of 
a field-preacher, who, like the most of his ignorant and 
vain and daring class, could not construct a tolerable sen- 
tence in his native tongue, or pen a fair letter. This in- 
spired individual called me to order roundly, and knew in 
the freest and easiest way where I was going to, and what 
would become of me if I failed to fashion myself on his 
bright example, and was on terms of blasphemous confi- 
dence with the heavenly host. He was in the secrets of 
my heart, and in the lowest soundings of my soul — he ! — 
and could read the depths of my nature better than his 
ABC, and could turn me inside out, like his own clammy 
glove. But what is far more extraordinary than this, — 
for such dirty water as this could alone be drawn from such 
a shallow and muddy scource, — I found from the informa- 
tion of a beneficed clergyman, of whom I never heard and 
whom I never saw, that I had not, as I rather supposed I 
had, lived a life of some reading, contemplation, and in- 
quiry ; that I had not studied, as I rather supposed I had, 
to inculcate some Christian lessons in books ; that I had 
never tried, as I rather supposed I had, to turn a child or 
two tenderly towards the knowledge and love of our Saviour ; 
that I had never had, as I rather supposed I had had, de- 
parted friends, or stood beside open graves : but that I had 
lived a life of " uninterrupted prosperity," and that I needed 

49 



578 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

this u check, overmuch," and that the way to turn it to ac- 
count was to read these sermons and these poems, enclosed 
and written and issued by my correspondent ! I beg it 
may be understood that I relate facts of my own uncom- 
mercial experience, and no vain imaginings. The docu- 
ments in proof lie near my hand. 

Another odd entry on the fly-leaf, of a more entertain- 
ing, character, was the wonderful persistency with which 
kind sympathizers assumed that I had injuriously coupled 
with the so suddenly relinquished pursuit those personal 
habits of mine most obviously incompatible with it, and 
most plainly impossible of being maintained along with it. 
As, all that exercise, all that cold bathing, all that wind 
and weather, all that uphill training, — all that everything 
else, say, which is usually carried about by express-trains 
in a portmanteau and hatbox, and partaken of under a 
flaming row of gaslights in the company of two thousand 
people. This assuming of a whole case against all fact and 
likelihood struck me as particularly droll, and was an oddity 
of which I certainly had had no adequate experience in life 
until I turned that curious fly-leaf. 

My old acquaintances, the begging-letter writers, came out 
on the fly-leaf, very piously indeed. They were glad, at 
such a serious crisis, to afford me another opportunity of 
sending that post-office order. I needn't make it a pound, 
as previously insisted on ; ten shillings might ease my 
mind. And Heaven forbid that they should refuse, at such 
an insignificant figure, to take a weight off the memory 
of an erring fellow-creature ! One gentleman, of an artis- 
tic turn (and copiously illustrating the books of the Men- 
dicity Society), thought it might soothe my conscience in 
the tender respect of gifts misused, if I would immediately 
cash up in aid of his lowly talent for original design, as a 
specimen of which he enclosed me a work of art, which I 
recognized as a tracing from a woodcut originally published 
in the late Mrs. Trollope's book on America, forty or fifty 
years ago. The number of people who were prepared to 
live long years after me, untiring benefactors to their 
species, for fifty pounds apiece down, was astonishing. 
Also of those who wanted bank-notes for stiff penitential 
amounts, to give away, — not to keep, on any account. 

Divers wonderful medicines and machines insinuated 
recommendations of themselves into the fly-leaf that was 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 579 

to have been so blank. It was specially observable that 
every prescriber, whether, in a moral or physical direction, 
knew me thoroughly, — knew me from head to heel, in and 
out, through and through, upside down. I was a glass 
piece of general property, and everybody was on the most 
surprisingly intimate terms with me. A few public insti- 
tutions had complimentary perceptions of corners in my 
mind, of which, after considerable self-examination, I have 
not discovered any indication. Neat little printed forms 
were addressed to those corners, beginning with the words, 
" I give and bequeath." 

Will it seem exaggerative to state n^ belief that the 
most honest, the most modest, and the least vainglorious of 
all the records upon this strange fly-leaf was a letter from 
the self-deceived discoverer of the recondite secret, " how 
to live four or five hundred years." Doubtless it will seem 
so ; yet the statement is not exaggerative by any means, but 
is made in my serious and sincere conviction. With this, 
and with a laugh at the rest that shall not be cynical, I 
turn the fly-leaf, and go on again. 



A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 

Oj^e day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o'clock 
in the forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view 
commanded by the windows of my lodging an equestrian 
phenomenon. It was a fellow-creature on horseback, dressed 
in the absurdest manner. The fellow-creature wore high 
boots; some other (and much larger) fellow-creature's 
breeches, of a slack-baked doughy color and a baggy 
form ; a blue shirt, whereof the skirt, or tail, was puffily 
tucked into the waistband of the said breeches ; no 
coat ; a red shoulder-belt ; and a demi-semi-military scarlet 
hat, with a feathered ornament in front, which, to the unin- 
structed'human vision, had the appearance of a moulting 
shuttlecock. I laid down the newspaper with which I had 
been occupied, and surveyed the fellow-man in question 
with astonishment. Whether he had been sitting to any 
painter as a frontispiece for a new edition of " Sartor Resar- 



580 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

tus ; " whether " the husk or shell of him," as the esteemed 
Herr Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded on a jockey, 
on a circus, on Gen. Garibaldi, on cheap porcelain, on a 
toy-shop, on Guy Fawkes, on wax-work, on gold-digging, 
on Bedlam, or on all, — were doubts that greatly exercised 
my mind. Meanwhile, my fellow-man stumbled and slided, 
excessively against his will, on the slippery stones of my 
Covent-garden street, and elicited shrieks from several 
sympathetic females, by convulsively restraining himself 
from pitching over his horse's head. In the very crisis of 
these evolutions, and indeed at the trying moment when 
his charger's tail was in a tobacconist's shop, and his head 
anywhere about town, this cavalier was joined by -two 
similar portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused 
him to stumble and slide the more distressingly. At length 
this Gilpinian triumvirate effected a halt, and, looking 
northward, waved their three right hands as commanding 
unseen troops, to " Up, guards ! and at 'em." Hereupon a 
brazen band burst forth, which caused them to be instantly 
bolted with to some remote spot of earth in the direction 
of the Surrey Hills. 

Judging from these appearances that a procession was 
under way, I threw up my window, and, craning out, had 
the satisfaction of beholding it advancing along the street. 
It was a Teetotal procession, as I learnt from its banners, and 
was long enough to consume twenty minutes in passing. 
There were a great number of children in it, some of them 
so very young in their mothers' arms as to be in the act of 
practically exemplifying their abstinence from fermented 
liquors, and attachment to an unintoxicating drink, while 
the procession denied. The display was, on the whole, 
pleasant to see, as any good-humored holiday assemblage 
of clean, cheerful, and well-conducted people should be. It 
was bright with ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts, and 
abounded in flowers, as if those latter trophies had come up 
in profusion under much watering. The day being breezy, 
the insubordination of the large banners was very repre- 
hensible. Each of these being borne aloft on two poles 
and stayed with some half-dozen lines, was carried, as polite 
books in the last century used to be written by "various 
hands," and the anxiety expressed in the upturned faces of 
those officers, — something between the anxiety attendant 
on the balancing art, and that inseparable from the pastime 



NEW UNCOMMEKCIAL SAMPLES. 581 

of kite-flying, with a touch of the angler's quality in land- 
ing his scaly prey, — much impressed me. Suddenly too, 
a bariner would shiver in the wind, and go about in the 
most inconvenient manner. This always happened oftenest 
with such gorgeous standards as those representing a gen- 
tleman in black, corpulent with tea and water, in the laud- 
able act of summarily reforming a family, feeble and 
pinched with beer. The gentleman in black distended by 
wind would then conduct himself with the most unbecom- 
ing levity, while the beery family, growing beerier, would 
frantically try to tear themselves away from his ministra- 
tion. Some of the inscriptions accompanying the banners 
were* of a highly determined character, as " "We never, 
never will give up the temperance cause," with similar 
sound resolutions rather suggestive to the profane mind of 
Mrs. Micawber's " I never will desert Mr. Micawber," and 
of Mr. Micawber's retort, "Really, my dear, I am not 
aware that you were ever required by any human being to 
do any thing of the sort." 

"At intervals, a gloom would 'fall on the passing members 
of the procession, for which I was at first unable to account. 
But this I discovered, after a little observation, to be occa- 
sioned by the coming on of the executioners, — the terrible 
official beings who were to make the speeches by and by, — 
who were distributed in open carriages at various points of 
the cavalcade. A dark cloud and a sensation of dampness, 
as from many wet blankets, invariably preceded the rolling 
on of the dreadful cars containing these headsmen ; and I 
noticed that the wretched people who closely followed them, 
and who were in a manner forced to contemplate their folded 
arms, complacent countenances, and threatening lips, were 
more overshadowed by the cloud and damp than those in 
front. Indeed, I perceived in some of these so moody an 
implacability towards the magnates of the scaffold, and so 
plain a desire to tear them limb from limb, that I would 
respectfully suggest to the managers the expediency of 
conveying the executioners to the scene of their dismal 
labors by unfrequented ways and in closely tilted carts next 
Whitsuntide. 

The procession was composed of a series of smaller pro- 
cessions, which had come together, each from its own me- 
tropolitan district. An infusion of allegory became per- 
ceptible when patriotic Peckham advanced. So I judged, 

49* 



582 NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 

from the circumstance of Peckham's unfurling a silken 
banner that fanned heaven and earth with the words, " The 
Peckham Life-boat." No boat being in attendance, though 
life, in the likeness of " a gallant, gallant crew," in nauti- 
cal uniform, followed the flag, I was led to meditate on the 
fact that Peckham is described by geographers as an inland 
settlement, with no larger or nearer shore-line than the 
towing-path of the Surrey Canal, on which stormy station 
I had been given to understand no life-boat exists. Thus I 
deduced an allegorical meaning, and came to the conclusion, 
that if patriotic Peckham picked a peck of pickled poetry, 
this was the peck of pickled poetry which patriotic Peck- 
ham picked. 

I have observed that the aggregate procession was on the 
whole pleasant to see. I made use of that qualified ex- 
pression with a direct me?*iing, which I will now explain. 
It involves the title of this paper, and a little fair trying of 
teetotalism by its own tests. There were many people on 
foot, and many people in vehicles of various "kinds. The 
former were pleasant to see, "and the latter were not pleas- 
ant to see; for the reason that I never, on any occasion or 
under any circumstances, have beheld heavier overloading 
of horses than in this jmblie show. Unless the imposition 
of a great van laden with from ten to twenty people on a 
single horse be a moderate tasking of the poor creature, 
then the temperate use of horses was immoderate and cruel. 
From the smallest and lightest horse to the largest and 
heaviest, there were many instances in which the beast of 
burden was so shamefully overladen, that the Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have frequently in- 
terposed in less gross cases. 

Now, I have always held that there maybe, and that there 
unquestionably is, such a thing as use without abuse, and 
that therefore the total abolitionists are irrational and 
wrong-headed. But the procession completely converted 
me. For so large a number of the people using draught- 
horses in it were clearly unable to use them without abus- 
ing them, that I perceived total abstinence from horseflesh 
to be the only remedy of which the case admitted. As it 
is all one to teetotallers whether you take half a pint of 
beer or half a gallon, so it was all one here whether the 
beast of burden were a pony or a cart-horse. Indeed, my 
case had the special strength that the half-pint quadruped 



NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. 583 

underwent as much suffering as the half-gallon quadruped. 
Moral: total abstinence from horseflesh through the whole 
length and breadth of the scale. This pledge will be in 
course of administration to all teetotal processionists, not 
pedestrians, at the publishing office of "All the Year 
Round/' on the 1st day of April, 1870. 

Observe a point for consideration. This procession com- 
prised many persons, in their gigs, broughams, tax-carts, 
barouches, chaises, and what not, who were merciful to the 
dumb beasts that drew them, and did not overcharge their 
strength. What is to be done with those unoffending per- 
sons ? I will not run amuck and vilify and defame them, 
as teetotal tracks and platforms would most assuredly do, if 
the question were one of drinking instead of driving: I 
merely ask what is to be done with them ? The reply ad- 
mits of no dispute whatever. Manifestly, in strict accord- 
ance with teetotal doctrines, they must come in, too, and 
take the total abstinence from horseflesh pledge. It is not 
pretended that those members of the procession misused 
certain auxiliaries which in most countries and all ages 
have been bestowed upon man for his use, but it is unde- 
niable that other members of the procession did. Teetotal 
mathematics demonstrate that the less includes the greater; 
that the guilty include the innocent, the blind the seeing, 
the deaf the hearing, the dumb the speaking, the drunken 
the sober. If any of the moderate users of draught-cattle 
in question should deem that there -is any gentle violence 
done to their reason by these elements of logic, they are 
invited to come out of the procession next Whitsuntide, and 
look at it from my window. 






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